The Psychology of the Main Social Groups

2020 ◽  
pp. 32-101
Author(s):  
Jon Elster
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Choice Model ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Rational Choice Model ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
Major Criticism

This chapter suggests that some of the perverse features of préséance can be understood in a certain perspective. It explains that when the rational-choice model fails, it is either because of indeterminacy or of irrationality. It confirms that indeterminacy arises largely because of uncertainty. The chapter considers the mental precursors and causes of action, such as motivations and beliefs, of the main categories of agents in the ancien régime. It mentions Jean Egret, who emphasized that the major criticism the parlements made of the administrative monarchy was that under the name of the intendant one had established the anonymous despotism of the clerks.

Regulating Crime: The Birth of the Idea, Its Nurture, and the Implications for Contemporary Criminology

2018 ◽  
Vol 679 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald V. Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
Choice Model ◽  
Dominant Model ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Rational Choice Model ◽  
Past Experiences ◽  
Management Changes

This volume’s contention that regulations have a powerful role in crime control contradicts the prevailing positivism of criminology—that is, the contention that criminality is largely explained by criminals’ past experiences. This article draws upon recent critiques of positivism and explains the implications for contemporary criminology. It begins by describing the ideas of a London magistrate, Patrick Colquhoun, about the determinants of crime and the best means of its control. Colquhoun’s writings were the first developed discussion of regulating crime, but they were soon eclipsed by positivist thinking. I list numerous weakness of positivism and argue that, instead of seeing offenders’ behavior as determined by their past, greater account should be taken of the situational inducements and opportunities to commit crime that they encounter in their everyday lives. Instead of positivism, the dominant model of criminology and crime control should be a neoclassicist, bounded rational choice model, which would introduce situational design and management changes to restrict offenders choices and modify behavior. That change in orientation would open limitless opportunities for criminologists.

Normative Judgment, Realism, and International Law

2021 ◽  
pp. 58-85
Author(s):  
Carmen E. Pavel
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Choice Model ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Actor Model ◽  
Normative Judgment ◽  
Moral Ideal ◽  
State Behavior ◽  
Rational Choice Model ◽  
Bilateral Treaties

A strand of thought within international relations realism claims that international law, understood as the dense network of multilateral and bilateral treaties, customary law, and institutions tasked with interpreting and applying them, cannot have meaningfully legal authority. This chapter traces the genealogy of the realist take on international law to a problematic use of the rational choice model for state behavior. Namely, realists derive skeptical positions about the authority and value of international law by using the rational choice model applied to states prescriptively rather than merely descriptively. With parsimonious assumptions about instrumental rationality, preferences, and choice situations, realists have put the model to good use to explain state action in the context of international politics. But they go much further, by taking the rational actor model to articulate an implicit moral ideal for states.

Curricular Choice: A Test of a Rational Choice Model of Education

2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 447-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Gabay-Egozi ◽  
Y. Shavit ◽  
M. Yaish
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Choice Model ◽  
Rational Choice Model ◽  
Curricular Choice

The Causes and Consequences of Terrorism in Africa

2014 ◽  
pp. 723-738
Author(s):  
Juliet U. Elu ◽  
Gregory N. Price
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Choice Model ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Economic Agents ◽  
The Past ◽  
Rational Choice Model ◽  
Economic Good ◽  
Counterterrorism Policy

African countries have experienced relatively high levels of terrorism. Terrorism has been linked to the theory of deprivation, but the extent to which terrorism is an economic good can be explained using a rational choice model of economic agents. Terrorism is also possibly motivated largely by existential other-worldly goals. If terrorism reflects a solution to a problem with identifiable costs and benefits that accord with the behavior assumed in economic theory, then it may be possible to contain terrorism by altering those costs and benefits. Terrorism as a manifestation of conflict could be a historically persistent phenomena with roots in the past. This chapter examines the causes and consequences of terrorism in Africa, and considers the extent to which existing evidence rationalizes the various explanations for it, and its implications for counterterrorism policy in Africa.

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