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Rational dissidents will not voluntarily contribute to the public good of either forcing a redress of grievances by the government or capturing the state because potential rebels have an incentive to free ride. If individuals receive the benefits regardless of whether they actively participate in a dissident group's activities, then why participate and pay any costs?

Collective action theories teach that rational people ought never to rebel. Yet, collective dissent does occur. This book is largely about solutions to the rebel's dilemma of mobilizing collective dissent: under what conditions they are adopted and when they are effective. Lichbach, a political scientist, begins by examining processes that lead rebels to a voluntary provision of the public good of dissent. These market solutions, which include increasing benefits, lowering costs of engaging in dissent, improving the productivity of tactics, and increasing the probability of winning, alter the parameters of a dissident's decision-making situation.

Market solutions to the rebel's dilemma assume atomistic individuals who engage in no social planning. Lichbach notes, however, that potential dissidents are often members of a community characterized by communal knowledge and values or are living in societies with an implicit social contract or with some preexisting dissident organization.

Dissidents who share common knowledge can overcome the mutual ignorance characteristic of market solutions, and dissidents who share common values can overcome the purely pecuniary self-interest characteristic of such solutions. Potential dissidents will participate in collective action if they share a process orientation to rebellion or other-regardedness. Community alone does not solve the rebel's dilemma, though, because communal norms are created either by coercion or by a social contract.

Dissidents can establish three types of social contracts in order to generate a voluntary political association to provide the public good they seek: self-government such as in Chinese Communists base areas during the 1930's, tit-for-tat, and mutual exchange. Social contracts, nevertheless, are rooted in a community's longevity, homogeneity, preexisting organizations, autonomy, stability, and concentration. Therefore, contract alone is insufficient to solve the rebel's collective action problem. A social contract is ultimately backed by the community.

Hierarchy is the third context within which market solutions to the rebel's dilemma operate. These assume that a dissident organization preexists collective dissent. Lichbach examines the processes used by dissident leaders to coerce followers into contributing to the public good. They include locating dissident entrepreneurs or a patron, imposing, monitoring, and enforcing a cost-sharing agreement on followers, and creating selective incentives.

Lichbach ultimately identifies nearly two dozen solutions to the rebel's dilemma and places them within the market, community, contract, and hierarchy typology. But, where dissidents are interested in solving their collective action problem, the regime is interested in exacerbating it. The regime, too, faces a collective action problem with respect to its own supporters, and rebels try to intensify that problem. The political struggle between regime and opposition is a struggle over solutions to their respective collective action problems. That is, Lichbach argues, all collective action problems are political. But, the state can more easily solve its collective action problem than can rebels. Revolution, which results from an anti-regime coalition consisting of multiple dissident groups overcoming multiple collective action problems, is therefore infrequent.

One of the dismaying predictions of rational choice theories of collective dissent is that only evil dissidents can succeed. Each of the solutions to the rebel's dilemma sets into motions a series of unintended consequences Lichbach dubs "iron laws". The act of overcoming the collective action problem generates privilege and inequality as dissident leaders are always better paid than followers and they always find ways to rent-seek. Any gains from collective dissent are always distributed unequally as well. Furthermore, many solutions to the rebel's dilemma cause dissident groups to tend towards authoritarianism and despotism.

Lichbach seeks to evaluate the accomplishments and limitations of collective action theories of protest and rebellion. One limitation is that each of the four solution categories is a logically incomplete explanation of collective dissent. Second, these theories are unable to predict aggregate levels and particular outbreaks of collective dissent. And third, many important questions are left unanswered. In particular, collective action models do not explore exactly who in the state, for what reasons, and located in which institutions determines where, when, and how much of the dissidents' demands are met.

On the other hand, collective action theories can tell us what sorts of individuals will participate in what sorts of dissident groups under what conditions. Another strength is that they explore the actions of dissident entrepreneurs and the actions of government to prevent collective dissent. These theories can explain how collective dissent becomes revolution and forecast what happens to dissident groups once they form and to post-dissident societies once they are achieved. Additionally, collective action theories address the issue of when dissident organization is really necessary.

Lichbach also contrasts the collective action research program with the traditional model of collective dissent, deprived actor theory. The deprived actor theory maintains that deprivation produces discontent and that discontent produces dissent. In deprived actor theories, grievances and ideology are most important for explaining collective dissent while collective action theories focus on resources, plans, and organizations.

This book is impressive in its use of the literature and historical episodes as supporting examples. (It contains 107 pages of notes and the list of references is 42 pages long.) Lichbach ably demonstrates the power of the rational choice model to explain collective dissent while, at the same time, drawing the reader's attention to its limitations. This book is highly recommended to anyone interested in collective dissent or in collective action in general.

David A. Latzko Business and Economics Division Pennsylvania State University, York Campus office: 13 Main Classroom Building phone: (717) 771-4115 fax: (717) 771-4062 DXL31@psu.edu www.yk.psu.edu/~dxl31