Abstract
This chapter begins by providing a brief overview of contemporary debates in the social sciences over the relative usefulness of cultural and rational choice approaches. It points to a small but growing literature that implicitly or explicitly integrates culture and rationality in the explanation of political behavior, dividing this literature into analysis in which culture is seen as directly shaping the way individuals calculate the costs and benefits of different actions, and analysis in which culture plays an indirect role in coordinating mutual expectations among individuals about one another's behavior. The chapter discusses possible problems with too free a use of assumptions about culturally induced preferences and beliefs in rational choice explanations of specific behaviors, and describes ways in which such assumptions can be grounded in general theories that systematically account for culture across a wide range of environments, placing extended emphasis on grid-group cultural theory.
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