Power and Rational Choice

Abstract

The emergence in recent years of a sub-field of rational choice theory in political science and other social sciences reflects the growing influence of economic modes of analysis in the social sciences. The penetration of economic modes of analysis into the social sciences registered a steady increase in the second half of the twentieth century. A number of different factors contributed to this development. Economics enjoyed a high prestige among the social sciences in the immediate post-War decades, a prestige which was backed by the unprecedented prosperity and high rate of growth experienced by the industrialized, capitalist countries of the west during the 1950s and 1960s. Economists were often consulted by policy makers and they formed an influential group in most countries. This was true even of newly independent countries like India which aspired to industrialize and modernize their societies. It was generally believed that economic analysis would constitute an important input into the processes of planned development which many developing countries like India were undertaking. The formal and abstract models of social processes used by economists seemed to offer the possibility of explaining and predicting social outcomes with a reasonable degree of precision. It is not surprising then that concepts and theories derived from classical and neo-classical economics began to penetrate social sciences like sociology and political science at the time. Concepts like exchange, and rational choice, began to be used by social scientists to explain a wide range of social phenomena. Further, new sub-fields of study such as public choice theory, rational choice theory, and exchange theory, among others, were developed within political science and sociology.