Review Article: ‘Major Combat Operations Have Ended’? Arguing about Rational Choice

2010 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Hindmoor
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Fault Line ◽  
General Argument ◽  
The Social

Arguing about rational choice theory remains a popular pastime. Following the publication of Green and Shapiro’sPathologies of Rational Choice Theory,a backlash against the use of rational choice theory within political science gained momentum. This article shows how, since 1994, sceptics have refined and extended the critique of rational choice and how practitioners have defended their approach, and a more general argument has emerged. In the 1990s, attitudes towards rational choice theory constituted a fundamental fault-line within the discipline, but changes to the way in which rational choice is practised and defended, together with some broader changes in the social sciences, have created more areas of common ground and taken some of the urgency out of this debate.

scholarly journals Self-love, Seif-interest and the Rational Economic Agent

1998 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
John O’Neill
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Institutional Setting ◽  
Individual Motivation ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
Relative Transparency ◽  
The Social ◽  
Minimal Modification

AbstractHume has a special place in justifications of claims made for rational choice theory to offer a unified language and explanatory framework for the social sciences. He is invoked in support of the assumptions characterising the instrumental rationality of agents and the constancy of their motivations across different institutional settings. This paper explores the problems with the expansionary aims of rational choice theory through criticism of these appeals to Hume. First, Hume does not assume constancy. Moreover, Hume’s sensitivity to the relationships between institutional setting and individual motivation owes something to the relative transparency of the plural language of vices and virtues that he employs. Second, rational choice theory’s minimal modification of Hume’s account of the relation of reason and the passions through the introduction of constraints of consistency on preferences is unstable.

Defending the role of rationality in the social sciences, rationally

2020 ◽  
pp. 053901842096344
Author(s):  
Tibor Rutar
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
The Social

Peter T. Leeson and Tobias Wolbring agree with me that rationality, properly clarified, should continue to assume an important theoretical role in modern social science. We disagree, however, about the precise extent of its role. In my reply to the debate I focus on two related issues that have emerged. First, can and should the concepts of rationality, or rational choice theory (RCT) more generally, be employed as something more than just one tool among many? Second, can all cases of norm-following be satisfactorily subsumed by rationality and RCT analysis?

Does the Law Change Preferences?

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-213
Author(s):  
Jennifer Arlen ◽  
Lewis A. Kornhauser
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Social Norm ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
The Self ◽  
Deterrence Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Law

Abstract “I would prefer not” HERMAN MELVILLE, BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER: A STORY OF WALL STREET (1853), reprinted in THE PIAZZA TALES 32, 48 (London, Sampson Low, Son & Co. 1856). Scholars have recently challenged the claim in classical deterrence theory that law influences behavior only through the expected sanction imposed. Some go further and argue that law may also “shape preferences,” changing people’s wants and values. In this Article, we analyze existing claims that criminal and civil law alter preferences and conclude that none suggest that the law shapes preferences. We first clarify this preference-shaping claim by elaborating the structure of rational choice theory generally and “preference” in particular. We then investigate three mechanisms of legal influence suggested by the preference-shaping literature: (1) the “serious harm” mechanism; (2) the “social norm” mechanism; and (3) the “self-improvement” mechanism. We then show that each of these mechanisms operates by changing the agent’s beliefs about the attributes or consequences of her choice options rather than by changing her preferences.

If Politics Matters: Implications for a “New Institutionalism”

1992 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rogers M. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
New Institutionalism ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
Traditional Methods ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
First Time

From Aristotle and Hobbes through Bentley, Truman, and Riker, many writers have claimed, more or less directly, that they are founding or helping to found a true political science for the first time. Modern scholars have usually expressed this aspiration via criticism of earlier “unscientific” approaches. Thus William Riker in 1962, advocating rational choice theory as the basis of political analysis, dismissed “traditional methods—i. e., his-tory writing, the description of institutions, and legal analysis” as able to produce “only wisdom and neither science nor knowledge. And while wisdom is certainly useful in the affairs ofmen, such a result is a failure to live up to the promise in the name politicalscience ”.lSubsequently, rational choice has indeed become the most prominent pretender to the throne of scientific theory within the discipline.

scholarly journals Against a voiceless world: Albert O. Hirschman’s political economics as an alternative to public choice

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-22
Author(s):  
Rafael Galvão de Almeida
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Public Choice ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Mechanisms Of Action ◽  
The Political ◽  
Formal Models ◽  
Albert Hirschman

This article proposes to analyze the contributions of Albert Hirschman to political economy. Although he was explicitly affiliated to any school of thought, Hirschman worked with both economics and political science to understand questions such as ‘why do people vote and participate in politics?’. He was disappointed with what mainstream economics could provide and elaborated the Exit-Voice-Loyalty (EVL) framework, to understand mechanisms of action in politics and the economy. His EVL framework has been widely read, but it did not develop a paradigm around it and was ignored by economists due to its lack of formal models. Hirschman went on to work on the political economy of citizenship in his works (Hirschman, 1977, [1982] 2002, 1991), in order to provide answers to questions of political economy away from rational choice theory, which he considered harmful.

Trust and Rational Choice

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen S. Cook ◽  
Jessica J. Santana
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Institutional Context ◽  
Past Performance ◽  
Network Embeddedness ◽  
The Social

This chapter provides an overview of the rational choice orientation to the study of trust, rooted primarily in economics, political science, and sociology. Conceptualizations of trust that build on a rational choice framework focus on the cognitions that form the basis of judgments of trustworthiness and decisions to place trust in another, as well as the embeddedness of trust relations in networks, groups, and institutions. The strengths of rational choice approaches to trust and their limitations are discussed, and brief comparisons are made with other approaches that have gained popularity in the social sciences (many of which are represented in this volume). Much of the trust we see in society is based on reasoned assessments of the evidence at hand that lead one to evaluate others as trustworthy given past performance, reputational information, and the incentives at play, including those derived from network embeddedness or the institutional context.

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