The Performance of Seaport Clusters - RePub - Erasmus Universiteit ...

Chapter 6 – Cluster Governance 61
6.5 Collective action regimes
6.5.1 The problem of collective action
The ‘problem’ of collective action (Olson, 1971) is relevant for all clusters. Even though
cooperation to achieve common goals (such as marketing and education) would be
beneficial for all organizations involved, such cooperation does not always develop
spontaneously. Individual firms can ‘free-ride’ on the cooperative efforts of other firms. Thus,
collective action does not arise. The performance of clusters where collective action
develops - collective action problems are solved - is better than that of clusters where
collective action problems are not solved.
In clusters, a number of collective action problems (CAP’s) is present. For each specific
CAP a ‘collective action regime’ (CAR) arises (see Mossberger and Stoker, 2001) 41 . In this
context, a regime can be defined as a ‘relatively stable collaborative agreement that
provides actors with the capacity to overcome collective action problems’ (see Mossberger
and Stoker, 2001, for a similar definition).
CAR’s are not by definition ‘efficient’ and do not automatically adapt. Inefficient collective
action regimes reduce the performance of a cluster, but there is no process of ‘selection and
adaptation’ that leads to the survival of effective regimes only. A regime is path dependent
and relatively stable over time 42 , because first, energy and capital have been invested in a
regime and these investments are ‘sunk costs’ that prevent adaptations of a regime (see
Westlund, 1999) and second, a regime defines the ‘rules of the game’ and becomes taken
for granted. Consequently, collective action regimes differ substantially between countries,
41 Even though governance regimes differ, a dominant governance style exists at a cluster level
(see Campbell et al, 1991). With a ‘bottom-up approach’ similarities of the different regimes in a
cluster will become clear, while such an approach allows for taking into account the possibly
large differences between different regimes.
42 Campbell et al (1991) argue that ‘When actors have already established associations (…) and
thus the capacity for selecting far sighted cooperative strategies, they can more easily devise
new multilateral governance mechanisms than actors from a sector where shortsighted bilateral
mechanisms dominate the governance regime’ (Campbell et al 1991, p. 331). This illustrates
the path-dependence of regimes