Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-17T20:33:39.772Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Review Article: ‘Major Combat Operations Have Ended’? Arguing about Rational Choice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2010

Abstract

Arguing about rational choice theory remains a popular pastime. Following the publication of Green and Shapiro’s Pathologies 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.

Type
Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Mueller, Dennis, ‘The Future of Public Choice’, Public Choice, 77 (1993), 145150CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Green, Donald and Shapiro, Ian, Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 3Google Scholar.

3 Green, and Shapiro, , Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory, p. 6Google Scholar.

4 For an openly partisan account of the aims and influence of the perestroika movement, see: Jacobsen, Kurt, ‘Perestroika in American Political Science’, Post-Autistic Economics Review, 32 (2005)Google Scholar, Article 6; Shepsle, Kenneth, ‘Statistical Political Philosophy and Positive Political Theory’, in Jeffrey Friedman, ed., The Rational Choice Controversy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 213222Google Scholar, at p. 213.

5 Grafstein, Robert, ‘Rational Choice Inside and Out’, Journal of Politics, 54 (1992), 259268CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 259.

6 Pettit, Phillip, The Common Mind: An Essay on Psychology, Society, and Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 111CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 King, Desmond, The New Right (Basingstoke, Hants.: Macmillan, 1987), p. 104Google Scholar. Also, see Self, Peter, Government by the Market (Basingstoke, Hants.: Macmillan, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Stretton, Hugh and Orchard, Lionel, Public Goods, Public Enterprise, Public Choice. (Basingstoke, Hants.: Macmillan, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Christiano, Thomas, ‘Is Normative Rational Choice Theory Self-Defeating?’ Ethics, 115 (2004), 122141CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 See Hindmoor, Andrew, ‘Public Choice Theory’, in Colin Hay, Michael Lister and David Marsh, eds, The State: Theories and Issues (Basingstoke, Hants.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 7997Google Scholar. Keith Dowding and I have previously argued that it is the optional use of the Pareto criterion which gives much RC scholarship its distinctive political flavour (Dowding, Keith and Hindmoor, Andrew, ‘The Usual Suspects: Rational Choice Theory, Socialism and Political Theory’, New Political Economy, 2 (1998), 451466CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

10 Lovett, Frank, ‘Rational Choice Theory and Explanation’, Rationality and Society, 18 (2006), 237272CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 237.

11 Mackie, Gerry, Democracy Defended (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taylor, Michael, Rationality and the Ideology of Disconnection (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marglin, Stephen, The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

12 Diermeier, Daniel, ‘Rational Choice and the Role of Theory in Political Science’, in Jeffrey Friedman, ed., The Rational Choice Controversy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 5960Google Scholar. For a more recent exchange, see Dowding, Keith, ‘A Pandemonium of Confusions: Kay and Marsh on Tiebout’, New Political Economy, 13 (2008), 335348CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Pettit, The Common Mind, p. 265. Also, see Mäki, Uskali, ‘Symposium on Explanations and Social Ontology: Explanatory Ecumenism and Economic Imperialism’, Economics and Philosophy, 18 (2002), 235257CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Vanberg, Viktor, ‘On the Economics of Moral Preferences’, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 67 (2008), 605628CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 605.

14 Mueller, Dennis, Public Choice III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also, see Mäki, ‘Symposium on Explanations and Social Ontology’.

15 Hindess, Barry, Choice, Rationality and Social Theory (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988)Google Scholar.

16 Satz, Debra and Ferejohn, John, ‘Rational Choice and Social Theory’, Journal of Philosophy, 91 (1994), 7187CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 71.

17 Lovett, , ‘Rational Choice Theory and Explanation’, p. 268Google Scholar.

18 Gerring, John, ‘The Mechanismic Worldview: Thinking Inside the Box’, British Journal of Political Science, 38 (2007), 161179Google Scholar, p. 161.

19 Chong, Dennis, ‘Rational Choice Theory’s Mysterious Rivals’, in Friedman, ed., The Rational Choice Controversy, pp. 3758Google Scholar; MacDonald, Paul, ‘Useful Fiction or Miracle Maker: The Competing Epistemological Foundations of Rational Choice Theory’, American Political Science Review, 97 (2003), 551565CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also, see Lovett, , ‘Rational Choice Theory and Explanation’, p. 253Google Scholar.

20 Pettit, , The Common Mind, p. 269Google Scholar. Elster, by contrast, draws a clear distinction between intentional and causal explanations (see Elster, Jon, ‘Introduction’, in Elster, ed., Rational Choice (Oxford: Blackwells, 1986)Google Scholar, and Elster, Jon, ‘The Nature and Scope of Rational-Choice Explanation’, in Ernest LePore and Brian McLaughlin, eds, Actions and Events: Perspectives on Donald Davidson (Oxford: Blackwells, 1985)Google Scholar.

21 Lawson, Tony, Economics and Reality (London: Routledge, 1999)Google Scholar.

22 Friedman, Milton, ‘The Methodology of Positive Economics’, in Essays on Positive Economics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953)Google Scholar. For a critical discussion of what Friedman actually said (as opposed to what he is usually understood as saying), see Mäki, Uskali, ‘ “The Methodology of Positive Economics” Does Not Give Us the Methodology of Positive Economics’, Journal of Economic Methodology, 10 (2003), 495505CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Shepsle, ‘Positive Political Philosophy’; Chong, ‘Mysterious Rivals’; Fiorina, Morris, ‘Rational Choice, Empirical Contributions and the Scientific Enterprise’ (pp. 85–94)Google Scholar, Schofield, Norman, ‘Rational Choice and Political Economy’ (pp. 189–212) and Susanne Lohmann, ‘The Poverty of Green and Shapiro’ (pp. 127–54)Google Scholar all in Friedman, ed., The Rational Choice Controversy.

24 Shepsle, ‘Statistical Political Philosophy’, p. 217.

25 Green, Donald and Shapiro, Ian, ‘Pathologies Revisited: Reflections on our Critics’, in Friedman, ed, The Rational Choice Controversy, pp. 235276Google Scholar, at p. 256.

26 Sánchez-Cuenca, Ignacio, ‘A Preference for Selfish Preferences: The Problem of Motivations in Rational Choice Political Science’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 38 (2008), 361378CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 363; Boix, Charles, Democracy and Redistribution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Epstein, David and O’Halloran, Sharyn, Delegating Powers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Huber, John and Shipan, Charles, Deliberate Discretion? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Tsebelis, George, Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Hampsher-Monk, Iain and Hindmoor, Andrew, ‘Rational Choice and Interpretive Evidence: Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place?’ Political Studies, 58 (2009), 4765CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Green, and Shapiro, , Pathologies of Rational Choice, p. 6Google Scholar.

29 Summaries of and guides to this research can be found in: Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, ‘Behavioral Economics Comes of Age: A Review Essay on Advances in Behavioral Economics’, Journal of Economic Literature, 44 (2006), 712721CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ostrom, Elinor, ‘A Behavioral Approach to the Rational Choice Theory of Collective Action’, Presidential Address, American Political Science Association, American Political Science Review, 92 (1990), 122CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Frohlich, Norman and Oppenheimer, Joe, ‘Skating on Thin Ice: Cracks in the Public Choice Foundation’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 18 (2006), 235266CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Caplan, Bryan, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Ariely, Dan, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions (New York: Harper Collins, 2008)Google Scholar; and Khahneman, Daniel and Tversky, Amos, Choices, Values and Frames (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

30 Mullainathan, Sendhil and Thaler, Richard, ‘Behavioral Economics’, in Neil Smelser and Paul Bates, eds, International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (New York: Elsevier, 2001)Google Scholar.

31 Guth, Werner, Schmittberger, Rolf and Schwarze, Bernd, ‘An Experimental Analysis of Ultimatum Bargaining’, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 3 (1982), 367388CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Camerer, Colin and Thaler, Richard, ‘Anomalies, Ultimatums, Dictators and Manners’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 9 (1995), 209219CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Elster, Jon, ‘Rational Choice History: A Case of Excessive Ambition’, American Political Science Review, 94 (2000), 685695CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 692; Boudon, Raymond, ‘Beyond Rational Choice Theory’, Annual Review of Sociology, 29 (2003), 121CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 7. Also see the discussion in Vanberg, , ‘On the Economics of Moral Preferences’, pp. 606–7Google Scholar.

33 Binmore, Ken, ‘Why Experiment in Economics?’ Economic Journal, 109 (1999), F16F24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Santos, Ana C., ‘Behavioral Experiments: How and What Can We Learn about Human Behaviour?’ Journal of Economic Methodology, 16 (2009), 7188CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also, see Siakantaris, Nikos, ‘Experimental Economics under the Microscope’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 24 (2000), 267281CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Most clearly in Peters, Guy, Institutional Theory in Political Science: The New Institutionalism (London: Pinter, 1999)Google Scholar.

36 Thelen, Kathleen, ‘Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics’, Annual Review of Political Science, 2 (1999), 369404CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Scharpf, Fritz, Games Real Actors Play: Actor-Centered Institutionalism in Policy Research (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1997), p. 41Google Scholar.

38 Scharpf, Games Real Actors Play, p. 36.

39 Thelen, Kathleen, How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the United States and Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Rothstein, Bo, Social Traps and the Problem of Trust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Rothstein, , Social Traps, p. 160Google Scholar.

42 See Olson, J., ‘Change and Continuity: An Institutional Approach to Institutions and Democratic Government’, European Political Science Review, 1 (2009), 332CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 3; Hay, Colin ‘Constructivist Institutionalism’, in Rod Rhodes, Sarah Binder and Bert Rockman, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 5674Google Scholar; Hay, Colin, ‘Constructive Institutionalism … Or, Why Ideas into Interests Don’t Go’, in Daniel Beland and Robert Cox, eds, Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming)Google Scholar; Blyth, Mark, ‘Any More Bright Ideas? The Ideational Turn in Comparative Political Economy’, Comparative Politics, 29 (1997), 229250CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blyth, Mark, Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Schmidt, Vivien, ‘Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas and Discourse’, Annual Review of Political Science, 11 (2008), 303326CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Schmidt, Vivien, ‘From Historical Institutionalism to Discursive Institutionalism: Explaining Change in Comparative Political Economy’ (paper given at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, 2008)Google Scholar.

44 Hay, Colin and Rosamond, Ben, ‘Globalisation, European Integration and the Discursive Construction of Economic Imperatives’, Journal of European Public Policy, 9 (2002), 147167CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 147. The whole constructivist institutionalist paradigm is subject to a powerful critique by Stephen Bell, ‘Do We Really Need Constructivist Institutionalism to Explain Institutional Change? In Defence of an Agent-Centred Historical Institutionalism’, available from the author at .

45 Davis, John, ‘The Turn in Economics and the Turn in Economic Methodology’, Journal of Economic Methodology, 14 (2007), 275290CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 275.

46 Pesendorfer, ‘Behavioral Economics Comes of Age’.

47 The classic references for which remain: Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip, Miller, Warren and Stokes, Donald, The American Voter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960)Google Scholar; and Lindblom, Charles, ‘The Science of Muddling Through’, Public Administrative Review, 19 (1959), 7488CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Indeed, political science can claim partial ownership here as Herbert Simon’s undergraduate and doctoral degree were both in political science (Bendor, Jonathan, ‘Herbert Simon: Political Scientist’, Annual Review of Political Science, 6 (2003), 433471CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

48 Baumgartner, Frank and Jones, Bryan, The Politics of Attention: How Government Prioritizes Problems (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005)Google Scholar; and Agendas and Instability in American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Jones, Bryan, Politics and the Architecture of Choice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Thaler, Richard and Sunstein, Cass, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; and Bendor, Jonathan, Diermeier, Daniel and Ting, Michael, ‘A Behavioral Model of Turnout’, American Political Science Review, 97 (2003), 261280CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bendor, Jonathan, Mookherjee, Dilip and Rav, Debraj, ‘Satisficing and Selection in Electoral Competition’, Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 1 (2006), 171200CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bendor, Jonathan and Kumar, Sunil, ‘The Perfect is the Enemy of the Best: Adaptive versus Optimal Organizational Reliability’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 17 (2005), 539CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Green, Donald, de Rooij, Eline and Gerber, Alan, ‘Field Experiments on Political Behavior and Collective Action’, Annual Review of Political Science, 12 (2009), 385395Google Scholar; and John, Peter and Brannan, Tessa, ‘How Different Are Telephoning and Canvassing? A ‘Get out the Vote’ Field Experiment in the British 2005 General Election’, British Journal of Political Science, 38 (2008), 565574CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and references therein.

50 Hollis, Martin, Models of Man: Philosophical Thoughts on Social Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 26Google Scholar. In ‘Beyond Rational Choice’, Raymond Boudon makes a great deal of the argument that rational choice is its own explanation, approvingly citing Coleman to the effect that the ‘rational actions of individuals have a unique attractiveness as the basis for social theory. If an institution or a social process can be accounted for in terms of the rational actions of individuals, then and only then can we say that it has been “explained” … and need ask no more questions’ (Coleman, James, Individual Interests and Collective Action: Selected Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 1Google Scholar).

51 Carver, Carl and Alexandrova, Anna, ‘No Revolution Necessary: Neural Mechanisms for Economics’, Economics and Philosophy, 24 (2008), 381406CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 382.

52 Green, and Shapiro, , ‘Pathologies Revisited’, p. 267Google Scholar.

53 Hay, Colin, ‘Theory, Stylized Heuristic or Self-fulfilling Prophecy? The State of Rational Choice Theory in Public Administration’, Public Administration, 82 (2004), 3962CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 56.

54 Brennan, Geoffrey and Lomasky, Loren, Democracy and Decision: The Pure Theory of Electoral Preference (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Ostrom, ‘A Behavioural Approach to the Rational Choice Theory of Collective Action’.

56 Quackenbush, Stephen, ‘The Rationality of Rational Choice Theory’, International Interactions, 30 (2004), 87107CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. 93–4; Lovett, , ‘Rational Choice Theory and Explanation’, p. 254Google Scholar; and Ferejohn, John, ‘Rational Choice Theory and Social Explanation’, Economics and Philosophy, 18 (2002), 211234CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 218.

57 On the notion of a research tradition, see Laudan, Larry, Beyond Positivism and Relativism (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996)Google Scholar. For an application to the RC debate, see Herne, Kaisa and Setala, Maija, ‘A Response to the Critique of Rational Choice Theory: Lakatos’ and Laudan’s Conceptions Applied’, Inquiry, 47 (2004), 6785CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Ostrom, Elinor, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 Chong, Dennis, Collective Action and the Civil Rights Movement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991)Google Scholar; and Rational Lives: Norms and Values in Politics and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); Brennan, Geoffrey and Hamlin, Alan, Democratic Devices and Desires (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘Economizing on Virtue’, Constitutional Political Economy, 6 (1995), 35–56; Brennan, Geoffrey and Pettit, Phillip, The Economy of Esteem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smyth, Regina, Candidate Strategies and Electoral Competition in the Russian Federation: Democracy Without Foundation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tallberg, Jonas, Leadership and Negotiation in the European Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 Bates, Robert, Greif, Avner, Levi, Margaret, Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent and Weingast, Barry, Analytical Narratives (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998)Google Scholar. The ‘middle ground’ quotation can be found on p. 12 and the account of what constitutes a ‘thick’ description forms p. 14. The book itself was subject to a particularly savage review by Elster, ‘Rational Choice History’.

61 Bell, Stephen, ‘The Limits of Rational Choice: New Institutionalism in the Test Bed of Central Banking Politics in Australia’, Political Studies, 50 (2002), 477496CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 Bell, , ‘The Limits of Rational Choice’, p. 488Google Scholar.

63 Dowding, Keith, ‘The Compatibility of Behaviouralism, Rational Choice and New Institutionalism’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 6 (1994), 105117CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 Satz, and Ferejohn, , ‘Rational Choice and Social Theory’, p. 71Google Scholar.

65 von Wright, Georg Henrik, Explanation and Understanding (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971), p. 134Google Scholar, emphasis in original.

66 Von Wright, , Explanation and Understanding, p. 153Google Scholar.

67 Von Wright, , Explanation and Understanding, p. 142Google Scholar.

68 Elster, Rational Choice; Hindmoor, Andrew, Rational Choice (Basingstoke, Hants.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 190192CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 Binmore, Ken, Playing for Real: A Text on Game Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 111CrossRefGoogle Scholar, emphasis added.

70 In particular, behaviourists have argued that preferences can sometimes be shown to be intransitive (so that whilst A > B and B > C, C > A) and non-continuous. See Khahneman and Tversky, Choices, Values and Frames, and the other references in fn. 30. Keith Dowding argues that in order to interpret behaviour, we need to assume that the behaviour is meaningful and that ‘we need the formal axioms [of revealed preference theory] to be able to interpret the behaviour’ (Keith Dowding, ‘Revealed Preference Theory’, unpublished manuscript).

71 Pettit, Phillip, The Common Mind, pp. 272–278; ‘Functional Explanation and Virtual Selection’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 47 (1996), 291302; and ‘Rational Choice, Functional Selection and Empty Black Boxes’, Journal of Economic Methodology, 7 (2000), 33–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72 Sen, Amartya, ‘Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioural Foundations of Economic Theory’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 6 (1977), 317344Google Scholar.

73 Pettit, , ‘Rational Choice, Functional Selection’, p. 42Google Scholar.

74 Pettit, , ‘Rational Choice, Functional Selection’, p. 42Google Scholar.

75 Lane, Robert, ‘What Rational Choice Explains’, in Friedman, ed., The Rational Choice Controversy, pp. 107126Google Scholar, at p. 124.

76 Popper, Karl, The Poverty of Historicism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960)Google Scholar.

77 Indeed, Røgeberg and Nordberg argue that the use of ‘absurd assumptions’ within economics can be justified because they ‘alleviate cognitive limitations in humans by integrating a variety of facts in untrue mock-explanations’. In other words, the fact that we are all boundedly rational explains the comparative advantage of models which assume that this is not the case (see Røgeberg, Ole and Nordberg, Morten, ‘A Defence of Absurd Theories in Economics’, Journal of Economic Methodology, 12 (2005), 543562CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 544.

78 Schotter, Andrew, ‘Strong and Wrong: The Use of Rational Choice Theory in Experimental Economics’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 18 (2006), 498511CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

79 Schotter, , ‘Strong and Wrong’, p. 504Google Scholar.

80 Schotter, , ‘Strong and Wrong’, p. 500Google Scholar.

81 Hindriks, Frank, ‘False Models as Explanatory Engines’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 38 (2008), 334360CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82 Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957)Google Scholar.

83 This research is reviewed in Hindmoor, Andrew, Rational Choice (Basingstoke, Hants.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 3045CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84 Olson, Mancur, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), p. 2Google Scholar.

85 Chong, , ‘Mysterious Rivals’, p. 39Google Scholar.

86 Goodin, Robert, ‘Institutional Design and Rational Choice’, in Robert Goodin, ed., The Theory of Institutional Design (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brennan and Hamlin, Economising on Virtue.

87 Hay, ‘Theory, Stylized Heuristic or Self-fulfilling Prophecy’.

88 Tsebelis, Veto Players.

89 Green, and Shapiro, , Pathologies of Rational Choice, p. 32Google Scholar.

90 Cox, Gary, ‘The Empirical Content of Rational Choice Theory: A Reply to Green and Shapiro’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 11 (1999), 147169CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 162.

91 The Newtonian example is taken from Kincaid, Harold, Philosophical Foundations of the Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 55Google Scholar. The strongest defence of unification as a goal of explanation is still that provided by Kitcher, Philip, ‘Explanatory Unification and the Causal Structure of the World’, in Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon, eds, Scientific Explanation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

92 Hardin, Russell, One for All: The Logic of Group Conflict (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

93 Kincaid, Harold, Philosophical Foundations of the Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 97Google Scholar.

94 Shapiro, Ian, The Flight from Reality in the Human Sciences (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

95 Mäki, Uskali, ‘On the Method of Isolation in Economics’, Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, 26 (1992), 316351Google Scholar, p. 321.

96 Marchionni, Caterina, ‘Contrastive Explanation and Unrealistic Models: The Case of the New Economic Geography’ Journal of Economic Methodology, 13 (2006), 425446CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rol, Menno, ‘Idealization, Abstraction, and the Policy Relevance of Economic Theories’, Journal of Economic Methodology, 15 (2008), 6997CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hindriks, Frank, ‘Tractability Assumptions and the Musgrave–Maki Typology’, Journal of Economic Methodology, 13 (2006), 401423CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hindricks, ‘False Models as Explanatory Engines’.

97 Cowen, Tyler, ‘Do Economists Use Social Mechanisms to Explain?’, in Peter Hedstrom and Richard Swedberg, eds, Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Schelling, Thomas, ‘Models of Segregation’, American Economic Review, 59 (1969), 488493Google Scholar; ‘Dynamic Models of Segregation’, Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 1 (1971), 143–86; and Micromotives and Macrobehavior (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978).

98 Following Hindricks, it might also be argued that Schelling’s model has been shown to have ‘explanatory depth’. For details of the various ways in which Schelling’s initial assumptions have been relaxed and modified, see Emrah Aydinonat, N., ‘Models, Conjectures and Exploration: An Analysis of Schelling’s Checkerboard Model of Residential Segregation’, Journal of Economic Methodology, 14 (2007), 429454CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

99 Sugden, Robert, ‘Credible Worlds: The Status of Theoretical Models in Economics’, Journal of Economic Methodology, 7 (2000), 131CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

100 Marchionni, , ‘Contrastive Explanation and Unrealistic Models’, p. 428Google Scholar.

101 Satz and Ferejohn, ‘Rational Choice and Social Theory’; Ferejohn has subsequently argued that: ‘this is pretty much the standard way that rational choice theory is applied to explaining social phenomena’ (Ferejohn, John, ‘Rational Choice Theory and Social Explanation’, Economics and Philosophy, 18 (2002), 211234CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 226).

102 Olson, , Logic of Collective Action, p. 16Google Scholar.

103 Chong, , ‘Mysterious Rivals’, pp. 52–3Google Scholar.

104 Downs, , An Economic Theory of Democracy, p. 27Google Scholar.

105 Hindmoor, , Rational Choice, pp. 122125Google Scholar.

106 Cartwright, Nancy, ‘The Vanity of Rigor in Economics: Theoretical Models and Galilean Experiments’, in Hunting Causes and Using Them (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 217261CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

107 Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy; Olson, The Logic of Collective Action; and Riker, William, The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1962)Google Scholar.