Pdf rational choice theory

Voter background means the voter's social identity, such as economic class, ethnicity, gender, race and religious preference.

Often, a candidate will purposely gear campaign messages to particular voters, using a theme that conveys sameness. This sameness can be based on the general background, appearance or even the personality of the candidate. However, sometimes voters identify with a candidate even without that candidate purposely catering to commonality. Either way, voters tend to vote for the candidate that seems most like them. Party Identification Now let's take a look at the influence of a voter's party. A voter's party identification directly influences that voter's decision.

By party identification, we mean not just a voter's party affiliation but also a voter's psychological attachment to a particular political party. Incumbent's Performance Next, let's look at how incumbent status can influence a voter's decision. A voter's view of an incumbent's previous performance greatly influences that voter's decision.

Most presidential elections feature an incumbent candidate. Incumbent refers to the candidate who currently holds that particular political office. For example, Obama was elected president in , he was an incumbent, seeking re-election, in Because a president is limited to serving no more than two terms, the presidential election will not feature an incumbent.

Unseating an incumbent president is difficult. For an incumbent to lose an election, some of the voters who voted for the incumbent in the previous election must switch allegiance. Many voters view an incumbent's performance based on the state of the national economy. When the economy is doing well, an incumbent has a good chance at re-election. The incumbent typically enjoys support from those affiliated with his or her party and will also gain the support of many Independents.

However, when the economy is doing poorly, an incumbent might still enjoy support of those who identify with his or her party but won't likely gain the support of Independents. The expressive conception of rationality does better in this respect. It suggests that people vote because they care about democracy in general or about a particular political candidate or ideology.

Since they conceive of themselves as being a good citizen or, say, a good socialist , they express this aspect of their identity by going out to vote for the socialist party.

In the third part of this dissertation, I analyze more fully the normative implications of the different conceptions of rationality. More specifically, I try to answer the question of which basic institutional structure is desirable if one assumes that people are by and large rational. This immediately shows that both the normative issue what should institutions look like?

In my view, proposals regarding institutional design and reform should be based on empirically adequate models of individual actions and motivations. This search for a realistic utopia goes against the conventional strategy of most economists who rely on the homo economicus model even when it fails to explain individual behavior.

To explain more fully what the normative implications are of the counterfactual assumption that all people are economically rational, I focus on the work of James Buchanan. In his theory of constitutional choice, he argues in favor of a minimal state whose only task is to make sure that the market functions properly. Buchanan thus favors a strict constitutional limitation of governments, which tend to expand beyond legitimate borders as soon as politicians and public servants are allowed to serve their own interests.

In my view, however, the abovementioned criticisms of the homo economicus model have theoretical as well as normative implications. The empirically supported fact that a majority of individuals does not act in economically rational ways creates more room for legitimate government intervention.

Since the s, the semblance between market competition for goods and political competition for power and its privileges has given a large number of scholars, especially social scientists, the impression that the economic methods could also be usefully applied in the study of politics.

Smith buys and votes; he is the same man in the supermarket and in the voting booth. Thirty years ago, it was far outside the mainstream in political science in almost every respect. Secondly, more than a methodology, he said, rational choice was "a family of theories" or "a technology for developing theories. Green identified that the spread of the rational choice approach beyond conventional economic issues is discussed by Becker , Radnitzky and Bernholz , Hogarth and Reder , Swedberg , and Green and Shapiro , among others.

To review the origin of the rational choice theory and how it came to be adopted as one of the major approaches or paradigms of analysis in the political science sub-field of contemporary political analysis. To attempt a critique of the approach, bringing out the strengths and weaknesses. To draw conclusion from the foregoing analysis. How did the rational choice theory originate in political science? What are the basic assumptions, criticism, strengths and weaknesses?

The approach has increasingly become a growing approach to political science, especially in the United States. Anthony Downs was the first to apply rational choice theory to electoral behaviour and party competition.

His work, reviewed in Hinich and Munger went further to revolutionize the studies of elections. Other directions in which rational choice theory has gone away from the works of Downs include areas of collective action, public choice, rent seeking, among others. Olson showed that individuals with self interest would not always take part in collective action to accomplish a common goal, for instance, why would some of us refuse to pay our tax despite the fact that the monies derived from taxes are used to develop our society; improve basic amenities and security.

This has lead to the development of the collective action theory, which can assist us to explain how collective actions failures can be grossly reduced if the decision-makers involved are small. The subject of public choice posits that the intervention of democratic governments to repair market failures have often created more problems than it solved. In part because, the combination of the self interest of bureaucrats in maximising their budgets and bureaucratic control over information on cost structure of state provisions of public goods results in their over provision, at the expense of the citizenry Niskanen, Post-war intellectual developments go back through microeconomics and welfare economics, nineteenth-century liberalism and utilitarianism, and the work of classical political economist like Adams Smith, John Locke and Thomas Hobbes.

If rational choice theory owes intellectual debts to the liberal tradition, it has made repayments by suggesting lines of analysis and arguments within the field. Rational choice theory adopts a quite different approach to the study of social action, human agency, and social systems and structures.

There are many variants of rational choice theory which tend to differ from other perspectives in the following ways. The rational choice theory begins, firstly, from the viewpoint of the individual, as opposed to viewing several individuals interacting together, social situations, or groups. The emphasis on the individual interest is always the starting point of the theory.

Although some theorists of rational choice make different assumptions about the individual and proceed to larger social groups and systems, each theorist begins with the individual as the foundation unit of the theory. These basic assumptions portray the methodological individualism of the theory— the individual as actor with an initial concern only about him or herself, as well as his or her welfare.

Upon the foundation of individualism, the rational choice theory may go further to portray how sharing, cooperation, or norms emerge, and the role they play in the decision making process. Another major differential aspect of the rational choice theory is the fact that it is sociologically minimalist.

It begins with a few simple assumptions about the individual and the relationship among individuals, and then builds models of social action and interaction that describe and explain the complexities of larger groups, systems, and whole societies.

This approach is very different from the systems and structural approaches of Durkheim or Parsons, who make social norms and values at the societal level an essential feature of their perspective. It also differs from the writers in the Marxian and Weberian traditions that emphasize large-scale, global, and historical social forces. The latter consider meaning, interpretation, emotions, experiences, and a wide variety of aspects of human existence, none of which can be reduced to the other, nor is capable of simple explanation.

Contrastingly, the theory adopts a relatively spare and simple model of the individual, one that can be applied across time and space, so that it is a universal model. Abell noted three assumptions made by rational choice theorists. These assumptions include: 1. Individualism — it is individuals who ultimately take actions. Individuals, as actors in the society and everywhere, behave and act always as rational beings, self- calculating, self-interested and self-maximizing, these individual social actions are the ultimate source of larger social outcomes.

From this first overarching assumption derives the four other major assumptions summarized below. Optimality — Individual choose their actions optimally, given their individual preferences as well as the opportunities or constraints with which the individual faced.

Abell defines optimality as taking place when no other course of social action would be preferred by the individual over the course of action the individual has chosen.

This does not mean that the course of action that the actor adopts is the best in terms of some objective, and outside judgment. Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory is a valuable survey and critique of research in the rational choice tradition, but one that slights that tradition's past and potential contributions to the study of politics.

Green and Shapiro, in Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory , assess ra-tional choice applications in American politics. They contend that rational choice. Populism and the 'Pathologies of rational choice theory' Cannon, Barry Populism and the 'Pathologies of rational choice theory'.