Rational Choice Theory and Empirical Research: Methodological and Theoretical Contributions in Europe

2012 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clemens Kroneberg ◽  
Frank Kalter
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (Extra-E) ◽  
pp. 607-613
Author(s):  
Aleksandr V. Dyatlov ◽  
Vitaly V. Kovalev ◽  
Svetlana A. Tikhonovskova ◽  
Elena L. Kharitonova

To establish the potential opportunities to achieve more efficiency of municipal management in the theory and practice of using the tools of state managerialism. This article uses rational choice theory, which is based on the idea of three forms of capital: physical, human and social. These forms are transformed into a set of resources used by the actor to achieve the goal in the process of choosing the most rational alternative. There was the research and presentation of its results on the third empirical indicator. The empirical research was carried out for the practical use of the developed theoretical model. Substantively this research will focus on such aspects of the activities of self-governments as work for indicators, management in the form of service delivery, restructuring of government bodies, effectiveness of interaction with civic activists and business communities.


OUGHTOPIA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-282
Author(s):  
In-Kyun Kim ◽  
Myeong-Geon Koh

Author(s):  
Kealeboga J Maphunye

This article examines South Africa's 20-year democracy by contextualising the roles of the 'small' political parties that contested South Africa's 2014 elections. Through the  prism  of South  Africa's  Constitution,  electoral legislation  and the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance, it examines these parties' roles in South Africa's democratisation; their influence,  if any, in parliament, and whether they play any role in South Africa's continental or international engagements. Based on a review of the extant literature, official documents,  legislation, media, secondary research, reports and the results of South Africa's elections, the article relies on game theory, rational choice theory and theories of democracy and democratic consolidation to examine 'small' political parties' roles in the country's political and legal systems. It concludes that the roles of 'small' parties in governance and democracy deserve greater recognition than is currently the case, but acknowledges the extreme difficulty experienced by the 'small'  parties in playing a significant role in democratic consolidation, given their formidable opponent in a one-party dominant system.


Author(s):  
Michael Moehler

This chapter discusses contractualist theories of justice that, although they rely explicitly on moral assumptions in the traditional understanding of morality, employ rational choice theory for the justification of principles of justice. In particular, the chapter focuses on the dispute between Rawls and Harsanyi about the correct choice of principles of justice in the original position. The chapter shows that there is no winner in the Rawls–Harsanyi dispute and, ultimately, formal methods alone cannot justify moral principles. This finding is significant for the development of the rational decision situation that serves for the derivation of the weak principle of universalization for the domain of pure instrumental morality.


1991 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen P. Turner

AbstractRudolf von Ihering was the leading German philosopher of law of the nineteenth century. He was also a major source of Weber’s more famous sociological definitions of action. Characteristically, Weber transformed material he found: in this case Ihering attempt to reconcile the causaland teleological aspects of action. In Ihering’s hands these become, respectively, the external and internal moments of action, or intentional thought and the factual consequences of action. For Weber they are made into epistemic aspects of action, the causal and the meaningful, each of which is essential to an account of action, but which are logically and epistemically distinct. Ihering thought purposes were the products of underlying interests, but included ‘ideal’ interests in this category. Weber radicalized this by expanding the category and making it historically central. This radicalization bears on rational choice theory: if ideal interests have a large historical role independent of material interests, and are not fully explicable on such grounds as ‘sour grapes’, the methods appropriate to the study of the transformation of ideas, meaning genealogies in the Nietzschean sense, are central to the explanation of action.


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