This chapter explores the obstacles and possibilities for development at the collective-choice level, and discusses the difficulties most likely to thwart efforts to solve collective-action situations in recipient countries, including how the reality of weak, bad, or missing institutions hampers development efforts. It unpacks the challenges arising at the collective-choice level by emphasizing the problems of information and motivation. Questions are posed about development aid in an effort to improve its design and outcome.
Keywords: collective choice, public goods, rent-seeking, corruption, asymmetric information, impossibility theorem,