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Rational Choice Theory: Theories
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Rational choice theory enjoys unprecedented popularity and influence in the behavioral and social sciences, but it generates intractable problems when applied to socially interactive decisions. In individual decisions, instrumental rationality is defined in terms of expected utility maximization. This becomes problematic in interactive decisions, when individuals have only partial control over the outcomes, because expected utility maximization is undefined in the absence of assumptions about how the other participants will behave. Game theory therefore incorporates not only rationality but ... common knowledge assumptions, enabling players to anticipate their co-players’ strategies. Under these assumptions, disparate anomalies emerge. Instrumental rationality, conventionally interpreted, fails to explain intuitively obvious features of human interaction, yields predictions starkly at variance with experimental findings, and breaks down completely in certain cases.
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This section first reexamines the empirical significance of rational choice models of a special case of social exchange such as political exchanges and processes. The rational choice model of political exchanges, called public/social choice theory or an economic paradigm of politics, has generated various anomalies or paradoxes that empirical research, everyday observation and common-sense admittedly expose (Margolis, 1982: 17-21). Cases in point are the paradoxes of individual voting, public contribution, political participation, selective incentives in collective action (Pappalardo, 1991) and related phenomena of political exchange (Perrone, 1984). These paradoxes reportedly become theoretical and methodological “pathologies” of the rational choice model of political phenomena (Miller, 1997). For instance, some empirical studies find relevant evidence for a causal linkage between social associations and voting turnout (Olsen, 1972), contrary to the individualistic-economic explanation of (non)voting given by the rational choice model of political behavior. In postulating that for individuals it is not rational to vote, the model neglects the observation that voting is often explained by multiple sociological factors, ranging from citizen duty or civic responsibility to social networks to power and cultural factors.
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Rational choice is the dominant theoretical approach in political science in North America and one of the main contending approaches elsewhere. This major new text provides a clear and accessible introduction assuming no prior knowledge and providing a uniquely fair-minded assessment of both the strengths and limitations of the approach. Truly international in scope and in its choice of examples, it provides broad-ranging coverage of the areas in which rational choice has been widely used and in-depth coverage of the main works of its key protagonists.
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Rational choice theory is a controversial basis for institutional design. Dire warnings have been issued about its potential effects. This paper examines in detail a single example of rational-choice-based institutional design in light of these warnings. The conclusions are that these warnings are ill-founded because they are based on an inaccurate or incomplete understanding of rational choice analysis, that rational choice can serve as a basis for effective and humane institutional design, and that rational choice has features that make it suitable for policy analysis.
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Ironically, the drastic nature of Blau's proposal provides su pport for Goode, Huber, and Short's thesis, because Blau accepts their premise t hat explaining individual behavior involves reliance on rational-choice theory. He differs from them merely in his willingness to restrict the domain of sociol ogy to exclude explanations of individual behavior, and thereby exclude rational choice.
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One branch of RCT theory is analytical Marxism or rational choice Marxism (RCM). It has primarily been social scientists in the Marxian tradition who have attempted to develop Marxism in this manner, so that there is a considerable gap between the theoretical approaches of writers like Coleman and RCM. Writers who consider themselves analytical Marxists ask many of the same questions and address the same issues as did Marx – transitions from one mode of production to another, class structure, class consciousness, exploitation, socialism. Some of the answers of RCM are the same as Marx and some are different, but generally RCM is committed to many of the same ideals as those to which Marx was committed – democratic socialism and human freedom and cr eativity. (See Wright in Carver and Thomas, pp. 23-24).
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