Rational Choice Explanation: Philosophical Aspects

Abstract

Rational choice explanation is the progeny of the Scottish Enlightenment and neoclassical economics. It is essentially reasoning from economic assumptions of what actors value to reach conclusions about both individual actions and aggregate- or collective-level outcomes. It is applied to virtually any significant behavior or social outcome, from political participation, crime, and drug addiction to institutional structures, legislative and interest group politics, law, norms, failures of collective action, and revolution. The most extensively developed parts of such theory are in the theory of elections and voting, the analysis of law under the rubric of law and economics, the study of group behavior, and game theory. Rational choice explanations gain their power from the attempt to reduce particular motivations to some narrower set of motivations, often simply to interests, which can be moderately well defined and measured across a large variety of contexts and actions. The entry surveys game theory and rational choice value theory, and it applies rational choice explanation to collective action, democracy, voting, norms, and social order.