Intro Flashcards
(15 cards)
What does rational choice function as and what does it allow you to do?
A lens
- You can approach all political science issues and questions in these fields with the help of rational choice
What is rational choice theory?
It refers to the school of though that defines human behavior and how any individual is most likely to make decisions
- It is a framework of analyzing decisions
What does rational choice theory claim to be able to do?
Claims to be able to explain how all decisions are made across all individuals
How do individuals decide on actions? (bare bones)
Individuals weigh the benefits (B) of an action against the cost (C)
- B>C -> action will take place / a particular decision is made
- C > B -> action will not take place
Who are the most avid supporters of rational choice theory?
Economists
Is rational choice theory one theory?
No, rational choice is not just one theory, it is basically a whole set of theories surrounding a few basic (but controversial) assumptions
What are models in rational choice theory?
Models are based on a priori assumptions
- They are abstractions (or simplifications) of the political world
- We test the implications of rational choice models with real life information
When does rational choice identify its assumptions and what does this affect?
Unlike many other approaches rational choice makes assumptions very clear from the beginning
- Which makes it an approach very vulnerable for criticism
Political science at the end of WW2 (history of rational choice theory)
- Thick descriptions
– Summary of how institutions worked plus focus on their historical development
- Normative component: many judgements were made about how they worked
– Judgments were not really motivated (they weren’t grounded in anything instead they were opinion based)
- Political science was descriptive and judgmental rather than analytical (the “why” question)
Political science 1950s-1970s (history of rational choice theory)
- Behavioralism
– Can we move towards a more “objective” approach?
– It emphasized an objective, quantified approach to explain and predict political behavior - the “why” question
- Started to systematically collect information and find empirical regularities (inductive reasoning)
- The start of “logical positivism”
- Economists were the first few that applied this “logical positivism”
- “Economic imperialism”
- Immense impact on political science
The take off growth 1970-1994 (history of rational choice theory)
- The combination of economic models and political science lead to rational choice
- Rational choice became attractive to many scholars from different fields
- Many books and journal articles, journals were written
– Around 1990s: more than 40% of the articles published in APSR based on rational choice
– Nowadays, closer to 80-90%
What problems started during the take off growth of rational choice between 1970-1994?
- One important finding
– Rational choice scholars showed that state intervention in the market could expect to fail - This is in contrast to many economist findings that were in favor for state intervention to balance out market failure
- Rational choice scholars were often used by neo-liberal (right) politicians
- Created a lot of hostilities between rational choice scholars and other political scientists
Difficulties arise 1994-2004 (history of rational choice theory)
Opposition to rational choice grew significantly
- Major problems came with the publication of Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory by Donald Green and Ian Shapiro (1994)
– Rational choice emperor has no empirical clothes
Their main claim was that rational choice theory has not yielded empirically useful results:
- The discrepancy between the faith that practitioners place in rational choice theory and its failure to deliver empirically warrants closer inspection of rational choice theorizing as a scientific enterprise
What is rational choice often confused with?
- Logical positivism / empiricism
- Mathematical logic
What are the two types of rational choice models?
Soft rational choice
- Without mathematical formalism and certain assumptions might be softened
Hard rational choice
- With mathematical formalism
