超越市场与国家:论共同体的重要性

Beyond markets and states:the importance of communities

大部分社会科学家假定,当人们扮演公民、政治家和公务员等公共角色时,他们要么服务于自己的私利,要么服务于公共利益。这种动机式区分方式导致了在关于制度设计的传统规范辩论中的二分法,即主要关注市场与国家任务的合理划分。本文着重描述了不属于这种动机式和制度性二分法的情形。由于强烈互惠动机的普遍存在,共同体的重要性在现代社会的制度设计中展现出来。事实上,一些非正式的社会规范会引导人们自发地遵循社会所赞许的行为,大多数人愿意为遵循或坚持这些规范而付出一定代价,而关于制度和政策问题的思考也应将其纳入考虑范围之内。

Most contemporary social scientists assume that people in their public roles as citizens,politicians,and public servants,serve either their private interest or the public interest. This motivational distinction has led to a dichotomy in conventional normative debates on institutional design,which have roughly focused on the proper division of tasks between markets and states. This article stresses the importance of phenomena that do not fit these motivational and institutional dichotomies. Focusing on the widespread motivation of strong reciprocity,it demonstrates the importance of communities in the institutional scheme of modern societies. The fact that a majority of people are prepared to take on costs in order to follow and uphold informal social norms,which induces them to voluntarily perform socially desirable behaviour,has to be taken into account when thinking about institutional and policy-related issues.