A Mirror of Enlightenment: The Rational Choice Debate

1996 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 793-806 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph V. Brogan
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Point Of View

Rational choice theory is the prevailing point of view in political science today. It serves as the paradigm by which political behavior is explained and the parameters of research and publication defined. Whether it deserves its exalted status is much debated. Its advocates see it as a victory of science and reason over prejudice and irrationality, and as a major contribution to the “intellectual flourishing” of the discipline (Booth, p. 1). Some critics see it as failed science. Others fear it as successful propaganda. The works reviewed here are representative of this range of assessments. Read individually, each offers a competing image of the role rational choice theory plays in political science. Read together, they constitute a dialogue that tells the story of the contemporary discipline and its relationship to the object of its study.

scholarly journals Challenges of rational choice theory in contemporary economic science

Revizor ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (91-92) ◽  
pp. 7-21
Author(s):  
Miloš Krstić
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Economic Behavior ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
The Core ◽  
Scientific Disciplines

In the focus of the paper there are some basic insights and ideas of rational choice theory, that is the "core" of contemporary economic theory. Also, rational choice theory is the "center" of modern political science and is used in various other scientific disciplines, such as: sociology, philosophy, political science, psychology, and the like. There are two main goals of this paper. One is to point out the limitations of rational choice theory as one of the theories of economic behavior (and decision making). The second goal is to analyze certain problems detected during the application of the rational choice theory in economics and to adequately consider the importance of alternative concepts, models, and theories from the point of view of improving the understanding of economic, social, political, and other processes in the economy and society as a whole.

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.

Problems and Methods in the Study of Politics

2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 244-245
Author(s):  
Peter John Loewen
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
Fundamental Question ◽  
Proper Place ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Physical Sense

Problems and Methods in the Study of Politics, Ian Shapiro, Rogers M. Smith and Tarek E. Masoud, eds., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. xi., 419.This important volume recounts a meeting of some the best minds in political science, but, in the end, it is a meeting in the physical sense (as the volume comes out of a conference held at Yale in 2002) and not really in any intellectual sense. The ostensible goal of the volume is to proffer answers to what the editors call “a fundamental question about the proper place of problems and methods in the study of politics…. Which should political scientists chose first, a problem or a method?” (1). Unfortunately, a good many of the contributors to the volume ask whether this is a question at all. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of those who reject the question do not have objections to the increased technical and mathematical nature of modern political science. And, equally unsurprising, those who suggest that method has too often come before problem are those who have earlier, and often eloquently, bemoaned the rise of rational choice theory and econometric applications. As an intellectual rapprochement, the work fails. It rather resembles a dinner of extended family, where long-held differences and grievances are kept just under the breath, but as a collection of essays by leading scholars which consider the methodologies and epistemologies of political science, the volume is a smashing success.

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.

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