Blocking demands less coordination than achieving political change

Evidence

Third, blocking requires less coordination than achieving change (Mahoney and Thelen 2009)—while reform needs broad coalitions and collaboration, blocking can succeed through small, well-­resourced groups operating with precision. Coordinating large political movements to achieve political change is indeed hard, and even if some policies have strong support, they might not be so easy to implement and carry through the policy process. — Mikael Persson and Anders Sundell, Blocking the Poor, 39

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Mancur Olson’s collective action logic and the general asymmetry literature on concentrated benefits vs. diffuse costs. — connects to: U.S. political institutions structurally hinder majority-driven policy change. — Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, Testing Theories of American Politics:…, 106
• SEED: An essay on why ‘winning the argument’ rarely wins the policy — coordination costs as the hidden tax on mass movements.