One way that citizens can become involved in public policy issues is to join interest groups that share their interests. By accumulating a large membership of voters, and by amassing resources in the form of dues, interest group leaders influence public policy. Individual members face the same incentive problems with interest groups as they do as voters. Each individual member will have negligible influence over the interest group’s activities. They can either choose to join and contribute, or not, but members are still excluded from the political marketplace. Their collective contributions convey power to the leaders of those interest groups, who are able to transact with the political elite in the political marketplace. As individuals, members of interest groups remain powerless. The leaders of those groups gain the bargaining power to enter the political elite.

This chapter explores the dynamics of non-linear changes within social systems, focusing on the processes that lead to societal collapse and ‘emergence’ (when a new social order forms that is qualitatively different from the past). The chapter first reviews the forces that create stability, differentiation, and oscillation. The DIME model is introduced, which explores how activists choose tactics to follow up the success or failure of their collective action. The chapter explores dynamics of intergroup contestation, including polarisation and backlash that drive systems towards either emergence or collapse. System stability is supported through coordinated identities and norm sequences that are often localised spatially, which act as homeostatic mechanisms to create resilient systems. However, behavioural changes manifest as actors establishing new cues and framing collective actions in ways that channel energy towards new identities and norms. Finally, the chapter explores mutual radicalisation, where mutual feedback loops of failure and threat signals between groups drive radicalisation, reinforcing intergroup tensions.

This chapter synthesises the key themes of the book, focusing on how the new psychology of intergroup relations advances our understanding of social change. The chapter first summarises how the new approach enhances traditional theories and methods, highlighting the role of place, time and change in group processes and intergroup relations. Multi-group dynamics create a complex system which is marked by intersectionality, and the interplay of stability, conflict and innovation. Further, the chapter explores how individuals and groups can engage with the new psychology of system change. It stresses the importance of altering relationships, understanding pushback and articulating shared visions to address collective threats with effective solutions. The need for enhanced perception of latent forces in social and physical environments is emphasised, alongside the call for connecting knowledge and power across mainstream institutions. The chapter considers how readers can be equipped to understand and effect change locally and globally, and to see and intervene in the broader socio-ecological system.

Chapter 17 considers the relationship between tenure-stream academia and unionization – a relationship that is often incorrectly believed to be nonexistent. The chapter argues that self-perception isn’t all that stands between tenure-stream faculty and collective action because multiple legal frameworks as well as the daily rhythms and realities of tenure-stream life discourage rootedness and community-building.

This chapter argues that in the Late Antique notion of “the people,” a normative aspect is present: the people is not just a social designation, but also acquires a constitutional sense if a group of individuals puts itself in a relationship of justice with the emperor (or, for that matter, a bishop). Indeed, the notion of emperor and people are coconstitutive: the one cannot exist without the other. This helps us to understand the political role the people played in Late Antique society, in the absence of institutions such as voting assemblies through which it could express itself. Seen through this lens, riots are occasions when it was questioned if the ruler truly was just. If the relationship could not be mended, the people could favor someone else as ruler. Thus, although there were numerous riots in Late Antiquity, they never questioned the social system but only sought to establish a personal interaction that could ensure justice.

Chapter 3 develops a theory of the domestic politics of intra-industry trade. It argues that changes in the nature of trade away from endowments-based trade to two-way trade within industries change the structure of preferences over trade policy and the way that actors mobilize politically in order to influence trade policy. This, in turn, affects trade policy outcomes and the ease with which trade agreements are concluded. First, I argue that the distributional effects of intra-industry trade drive a wedge through industry preferences over trade policy. As intra-industry trade increases, globalized firms support openness, and smaller, domestic-oriented firms within the same industry support protection. Second, these heterogeneous firm preferences change the ability of industries to overcome collective action problems and organize politically to influence trade policy. I argue that industry associations are hamstrung in their ability to lobby while individual firms have a greater incentive to lobby alone for their preferred policies. Third, exporters will overwhelm domestic-oriented firms in their ability to lobby, and as a result, tariffs will be lower in industries with higher intra-industry trade, though this may not be the case with non-tariff barriers to trade.

The book opens with some compelling examples of puzzling episodes in recent trade policy negotiations. I question why Americans were largely unaware of TTIP, while the TPP became a lightning rod for controversy and went down in flames on day one of the Trump presidency. I also discuss the dramatic rise in firm-level lobbying over these and other trade agreements, despite the IPE literature’s longstanding assumption that firms primarily engage in trade politics collectively via industry associations or class-based coalitions. Then I briefly introduce my theoretical story, which makes sense of these and other puzzles. I discuss the state of our understanding of trade politics in developed democracies before presenting the plan of the book to follow.

The challenges for governance in ancient Athens are dwarfed by the challenges for governance in our own time. Humanity seems incapable of cooperation for collective action. We are failing in problem-solving. This failure is evidenced at every level of governance. It is especially obvious in global governance, where an escalating avalanche of ecological and other crises has already begun and hurtles toward us. The failure of democracies is particularly distressing in that it is the democracies that, in the eyes of those who support and believe in them, are supposed to do the most to meet the common needs of humanity. The human species has survived and thrived because we have cooperated. We must do so now if we are to meet the challenges before us and secure the fullness of human flourishing through sustainable development. We have, however, not yet found the common will that is indispensable to taking the collective action that is necessary to achieve our goals for humanity. Like the ancient Athenians in their triremes, we must learn to row together to serve the public good. We must, like them, form participatory knowledge networks for the public good. This requires vastly more public participation in self-rule at every level of human governance. New cooperative networks for sustainable development are examples of the kind and extent of popular participation we need to continue to survive and succeed as a species.

Environmental policies and enforcement pose fundamental corruption issues relating to the tensions between economic self-interest and the public good. By directing our attention to the challenges of collective action, they also highlight the importance of state-level institutional and political characteristics – notably, the political clout of industrial and environmental lobby groups. High levels of corruption and low levels of trust both weaken the stringency and enforcement of environmental policies and affect levels of emissions, although as levels of trust in a state increase, the effects of corruption weaken or vanish. Our environmental findings closely parallel those in other chapters having to do with COVID policies – not surprising, as they raise similar questions of policy and compliance – and support our argument that thinking solely in terms of specific acts of rule- or law-breaking is an incomplete understanding of corruption, its causes, and its consequences.