Mahatma Gandhi and the Prisoner’s Dilemma: Strategic Civil Disobedience and Great Britain’s Great Loss of Empire in India

Siddiky, Chowdhury Irad Ahmed (2005): Mahatma Gandhi and the Prisoner’s Dilemma: Strategic Civil Disobedience and Great Britain’s Great Loss of Empire in India. Published in: Public Choice Society Annual Conference, Papers and Proceedings 2006 , Vol. Public, No. Public Choice Society Annual Conference, Papers and Proceedings 2006 (2 April 2006): pp. 15-50.

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between statutory monopoly and collective action as a multi-person assurance game culminating in an end to British Empire in India. In a simple theoretical model, it is demonstrated whether or not a collective good enjoys (or is perceived to enjoy) pure jointness of production and why the evolutionary stable strategy of non-violence was supposed to work on the principle that the coordinated reaction of a ethnically differentiated religious crowd to a conflict between two parties (of colonizer and colonized) over confiscatory salt taxation would significantly affect its course. Following Mancur Olson (1965) and Dennis Chong (1991), a model of strategic civil disobedience is created which is used to demonstrate how collective action can be used to produce an all-or-nothing public good to achieve economic and political independence.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: confiscatory taxation; multi-person assurance game; strategic civil disobedience
• Subjects: N - Economic History > N4 - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation > N45 - Asia including Middle East

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