Feminism and rational choice theory

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Driscoll ◽  
Mona Lena Krook
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Combined Approach ◽  
Choice Analysis ◽  
A Current

Feminism and rational choice theory have both been hailed as approaches with the potential to revolutionize political science. Apart from a few exceptions, however, work utilizing these two perspectives rarely overlaps. This article reviews their main contributions and explores the potential for a combined approach. It argues that a synthesis of feminism and rational choice theory would involve attending to questions of gender, strategy, institutions, power, and change. The contours and benefits of this approach are illustrated with reference to one particular area of research: the adoption of electoral gender quotas. Despite a current lack of engagement across approaches, this example illustrates that the tools of feminist and rational choice analysis may be brought together in productive ways to ask and answer theoretically and substantively important questions in political science.

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.

scholarly journals Natural selection can favour ‘irrational’ behaviour

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 20130935 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. M. McNamara ◽  
P. C. Trimmer ◽  
A. I. Houston
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Food Availability ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Irrational Behaviour ◽  
Near Future ◽  
Behavioural Sciences ◽  
A Current

Understanding decisions is the fundamental aim of the behavioural sciences. The theory of rational choice is based on axiomatic principles such as transitivity and independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA). Empirical studies have demonstrated that the behaviour of humans and other animals often seems irrational; there can be a lack of transitivity in choice and seemingly irrelevant alternatives can alter decisions. These violations of transitivity and IIA undermine rational choice theory. However, we show that an individual that is maximizing its rate of food gain can exhibit failure of transitivity and IIA. We show that such violations can be caused because a current option may disappear in the near future or a better option may reappear soon. Current food options can be indicative of food availability in the near future, and this key feature can result in apparently irrational behaviour.

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.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document