Review article: Major combat operations have ended? Arguing about rational choice

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 41, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 191-210

  Hindmoor, Andrew ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79957481744     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123410000372     Document Type: Review

References (176)

1. Dennis Mueller, 'The Future of Public Choice', Public Choice, 77(1993), 145-50.
2. Donald Green and Ian Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 3.
3. Green and Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory, p. 6.
4. For an openly partisan account of the aims and influence of the perestroika movement, see: Kurt Jacobsen, 'Perestroika in American Political Science', Post-Autistic Economics Review, 32 (2005), Article 6;
5. Kenneth Shepsle, 'Statistical Political Philosophy and Positive Political Theory', in Jeffrey Friedman, ed., The Rational Choice Controversy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 213-22, at p. 213.
6. Robert Grafstein, 'Rational Choice Inside and Out', Journal of Politics, 54(1992), 259-68, p. 259.
7. Phillip Pettit, The Common Mind: An Essay on Psychology, Society, and Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 111.
8. Desmond King, The New Right (Basingstoke, Hants.: Macmillan, 1987), p. 104. Also, see Peter Self, Government by the Market (Basingstoke, Hants.: Macmillan, 1993), and Hugh Stretton and Lionel Orchard, Public Goods, Public Enterprise, Public Choice. (Basingstoke, Hants.: Macmillan, 1994).
9. Thomas Christiano, 'Is Normative Rational Choice Theory Self-Defeating?' Ethics, 115(2004), 122-41. (Pubitemid 40300738)
10. See Andrew Hindmoor, 'Public Choice Theory', in Colin Hay, Michael Lister and David Marsh, eds, The State: Theories and Issues (Basingstoke, Hants.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 79-97. 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
11. (Keith Dowding and Andrew Hindmoor, 'The Usual Suspects: Rational Choice Theory, Socialism and Political Theory', New Political Economy, 2(1998), 451-66).
12. Frank Lovett, 'Rational Choice Theory and Explanation', Rationality and Society, 18(2006), 237-72, p. 237. (Pubitemid 43735604)
13. Gerry Mackie, Democracy Defended (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003);
14. Michael Taylor, Rationality and the Ideology of Disconnection (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006);
15. Stephen Marglin, The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008).
16. Daniel Diermeier, '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. 59-60. For a more recent exchange
17. see Keith Dowding, 'A Pandemonium of Confusions: Kay and Marsh on Tiebout', New Political Economy, 13(2008), 335-48.
18. Pettit, The Common Mind, p. 265.
19. Also, see Uskali Maki, 'Symposium on Explanations and Social Ontology: Explanatory Ecumenism and Economic Imperialism', Economics and Philosophy, 18(2002), 235-57;
20. and Viktor Vanberg, 'On the Economics of Moral Preferences', American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 67(2008), 605-28, p. 605.
21. Dennis Mueller, Public Choice III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 1.
22. Also, see Mäki, 'Symposium on Explanations and Social Ontology'.
23. Barry Hindess, Choice, Rationality and Social Theory (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988).
24. Debra Satz and John Ferejohn, 'Rational Choice and Social Theory', Journal of Philosophy, 91(1994), 71-87, p. 71.
25. Lovett, 'Rational Choice Theory and Explanation', p. 268.
26. John Gerring, 'The Mechanismic Worldview: Thinking Inside the Box', British Journal of Political Science, 38(2007), 161-79, p. 161.
27. Dennis Chong, 'Rational Choice Theory's Mysterious Rivals', in Friedman, ed., The Rational Choice Controversy, pp. 37-58;
28. Paul MacDonald, 'Useful Fiction or Miracle Maker: The Competing Epistemological Foundations of Rational Choice Theory', American Political Science Review, 97(2003), 551-65. (Pubitemid 37537549)
29. Also, see Lovett, 'Rational Choice Theory and Explanation', p. 253.
30. Pettit, The Common Mind, p. 269. Elster, by contrast, draws a clear distinction between intentional and causal explanations
31. (see Jon Elster, 'Introduction', in Elster, ed., Rational Choice (Oxford: Blackwells, 1986)
32. and Jon Elster, '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).
33. Tony Lawson, Economics and Reality (London: Routledge, 1999).
34. Milton Friedman, 'The Methodology of Positive Economics', in Essays on Positive Economics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953). For a critical discussion of what Friedman actually said (as opposed to what he is usually understood as saying)
35. see Uskali Maki, ' "The Methodology of Positive Economics" Does Not Give Us the Methodology of Positive Economics', Journal of Economic Methodology, 10(2003), 495-505.
36. Shepsle, 'Positive Political Philosophy';
37. Chong, 'Mysterious Rivals';
38. Morris Fiorina, 'Rational Choice, Empirical Contributions and the Scientific Enterprise' (pp. 85-94)
39. Norman Schofield, 'Rational Choice and Political Economy' (pp. 189-212)
40. and Susanne Lohmann, 'The Poverty of Green and Shapiro' (pp. 127-54) all in Friedman, ed., The Rational Choice Controversy.
41. Shepsle, 'Statistical Political Philosophy', p. 217.
42. Donald Green and Ian Shapiro, 'Pathologies Revisited: Reflections on our Critics', in Friedman, ed, The Rational Choice Controversy, pp. 235-76, at p. 256.
43. Ignacio Sanchez-Cuenca, 'A Preference for Selfish Preferences: The Problem of Motivations in Rational Choice Political Science', Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 38(2008), 361-78, p. 363;
44. Charles Boix, Democracy and Redistribution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003);
45. David Epstein and Sharyn O'Halloran, Delegating Powers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999);
46. John Huber and Charles Shipan, Deliberate Discretion? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002);
47. and George Tsebelis, Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 2002).
48. Iain Hampsher-Monk and Andrew Hindmoor, 'Rational Choice and Interpretive Evidence: Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place?' Political Studies, 58(2009), 47-65.
49. Green and Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice, p. 6.
50. Summaries of and guides to this research can be found in: Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 'Behavioral Economics Comes of Age: A Review Essay on Advances in Behavioral Economics', Journal of Economic Literature, 44(2006), 712-21;
51. Elinor Ostrom, 'A Behavioral Approach to the Rational Choice Theory of Collective Action', Presidential Address, American Political Science Association, American Political Science Review, 92(1990), 1-22;
52. Norman Frohlich and Joe Oppenheimer, 'Skating on Thin Ice: Cracks in the Public Choice Foundation', Journal of Theoretical Politics, 18(2006), 235-66; (Pubitemid 43936816)
53. Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 2007);
54. Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions (New York: Harper Collins, 2008);
55. and Daniel Khahneman and Amos Tversky, Choices, Values and Frames (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
56. Sendhil Mullainathan and Richard Thaler, 'Behavioral Economics', in Neil Smelser and Paul Bates, eds, International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (New York: Elsevier, 2001).
57. Werner Guth, Rolf Schmittberger and Bernd Schwarze, 'An Experimental Analysis of Ultimatum Bargaining', Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 3(1982), 367-88.
58. Colin Camerer and Richard Thaler, 'Anomalies, Ultimatums, Dictators and Manners', Journal of Economic Perspectives, 9(1995), 209-19;
59. Jon Elster, 'Rational Choice History: A Case of Excessive Ambition', American Political Science Review, 94(2000), 685-95, p. 692;
60. Raymond Boudon, 'Beyond Rational Choice Theory', Annual Review of Sociology, 29(2003), 1-21, p. 7. (Pubitemid 37395363)
61. Also see the discussion in Vanberg, 'On the Economics of Moral Preferences', pp. 606-7.
62. Ken Binmore, 'Why Experiment in Economics?' Economic Journal, 109 (1999), F16-F24.
63. Ana C. Santos, 'Behavioral Experiments: How and What Can We Learn about Human Behaviour?' Journal of Economic Methodology, 16(2009), 71-88.
64. Also, see Nikos Siakantaris, 'Experimental Economics under the Microscope', Cambridge Journal of Economics, 24(2000), 267-81. (Pubitemid 30323159)
65. Most clearly in Guy Peters, Institutional Theory in Political Science: The New Institutionalism (London: Pinter, 1999).
66. Kathleen Thelen, 'Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics', Annual Review of Political Science, 2(1999), 369-404.
67. Fritz Scharpf, Games Real Actors Play: Actor-Centered Institutionalism in Policy Research (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1997), p. 41.
68. Scharpf, Games Real Actors Play, p. 36.
69. Kathleen Thelen, How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the United States and Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 26.
70. Bo Rothstein, Social Traps and the Problem of Trust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 29.
71. Rothstein, Social Traps, p. 160.
72. See J. Olson, 'Change and Continuity: An Institutional Approach to Institutions and Democratic Government', European Political Science Review, 1(2009), 3-32, p. 3;
73. Colin Hay 'Constructivist Institutionalism', in Rod Rhodes, Sarah Binder and Bert Rockman, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 56-74;
74. Colin Hay, '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);
75. Mark Blyth, 'Any More Bright Ideas? The Ideational Turn in Comparative Political Economy', Comparative Politics, 29(1997), 229-50; (Pubitemid 127015930)
76. Mark Blyth, Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002);
77. and Vivien Schmidt, 'Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas and Discourse', Annual Review of Political Science, 11(2008), 303-26.
78. Vivien Schmidt, '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).
79. Colin Hay and Ben Rosamond, 'Globalisation, European Integration and the Discursive Construction of Economic Imperatives', Journal of European Public Policy, 9(2002), 147-67, 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 Stephen. Bell@uq.edu.au.
80. John Davis, 'The Turn in Economics and the Turn in Economic Methodology', Journal of Economic Methodology, 14(2007), 275-90, p. 275.
81. Pesendorfer, 'Behavioral Economics Comes of Age'.
82. The classic references for which remain: Angus Campbell, Philip Converse, Warren Miller and Donald Stokes, The American Voter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960);
83. and Charles Lindblom, 'The Science of Muddling Through', Public Administrative Review, 19(1959), 74-88. Indeed, political science can claim partial ownership here as Herbert Simon's undergraduate and doctoral degree were both in political science
84. (Jonathan Bendor, 'Herbert Simon: Political Scientist', Annual Review of Political Science, 6(2003), 433-71).
85. Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones, The Politics of Attention: How Government Prioritizes Problems (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005);
86. and Agendas and Instability in American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993);
87. Bryan Jones, Politics and the Architecture of Choice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001);
88. Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008);
89. and Jonathan Bendor, Daniel Diermeier and Michael Ting, 'A Behavioral Model of Turnout', American Political Science Review, 97(2003), 261-80; (Pubitemid 36737847)
90. Jonathan Bendor, Dilip Mookherjee and Debraj Rav, 'Satisficing and Selection in Electoral Competition', Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 1(2006), 171-200;
91. Jonathan Bendor and Sunil Kumar, 'The Perfect is the Enemy of the Best: Adaptive versus Optimal Organizational Reliability', Journal of Theoretical Politics, 17(2005), 5-39. (Pubitemid 40167033)
92. Donald Green, Eline de Rooij and Alan Gerber, 'Field Experiments on Political Behavior and Collective Action', Annual Review of Political Science, 12(2009), 385-95;
93. and Peter John and Tessa Brannan, '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), 565-74, and references therein.
94. Martin Hollis, Models of Man: Philosophical Thoughts on Social Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 26.
95. 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' (James Coleman, Individual Interests and Collective Action: Selected Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 1).
96. Carl Carver and Anna Alexandrova, 'No Revolution Necessary: Neural Mechanisms for Economics', Economics and Philosophy, 24(2008), 381-406, p. 382.
97. Green and Shapiro, 'Pathologies Revisited', p. 267.
98. Colin Hay, 'Theory, Stylized Heuristic or Self-fulfilling Prophecy? The State of Rational Choice Theory in Public Administration', Public Administration, 82(2004), 39-62, p. 56. (Pubitemid 38381966)
99. Geoffrey Brennan and Loren Lomasky, Democracy and Decision: The Pure Theory of Electoral Preference (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
100. Ostrom, 'A Behavioural Approach to the Rational Choice Theory of Collective Action'.
101. Stephen Quackenbush, 'The Rationality of Rational Choice Theory', International Interactions, 30(2004), 87-107, pp. 93-4; (Pubitemid 38904326)
102. Lovett, 'Rational Choice Theory and Explanation', p. 254;
103. and John Ferejohn, 'Rational Choice Theory and Social Explanation', Economics and Philosophy, 18(2002), 211-34, p. 218.
104. On the notion of a research tradition, see Larry Laudan, Beyond Positivism and Relativism (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996). For an application to the RC debate
105. see Kaisa Herne and Maija Setala, 'A Response to the Critique of Rational Choice Theory: Lakatos' and Laudan's Conceptions Applied', Inquiry, 47(2004), 67-85.
106. Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
107. Dennis Chong, Collective Action and the Civil Rights Movement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991);
108. and Rational Lives: Norms and Values in Politics and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000);
109. Geoffrey Brennan and Alan Hamlin, Democratic Devices and Desires (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000);
110. and 'Economizing on Virtue', Constitutional Political Economy, 6(1995), 35-56;
111. Geoffrey Brennan and Phillip Pettit, The Economy of Esteem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004);
112. Regina Smyth, Candidate Strategies and Electoral Competition in the Russian Federation: Democracy Without Foundation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006);
113. Jonas Tallberg, Leadership and Negotiation in the European Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
114. Robert Bates, Avner Greif, Margaret Levi, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal and Barry Weingast, Analytical Narratives (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1998). 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'.
115. Stephen Bell, 'The Limits of Rational Choice: New Institutionalism in the Test Bed of Central Banking Politics in Australia', Political Studies, 50(2002), 477-96.
116. Bell, 'The Limits of Rational Choice', p. 488.
117. Keith Dowding, 'The Compatibility of Behaviouralism, Rational Choice and New Institutionalism', Journal of Theoretical Politics, 6(1994), 105-17.
118. Satz and Ferejohn, 'Rational Choice and Social Theory', p. 71.
119. Georg Henrik von Wright, Explanation and Understanding (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971), p. 134, emphasis in original.
120. Von Wright, Explanation and Understanding, p. 153.
121. Von Wright, Explanation and Understanding, p. 142.
122. Elster, Rational Choice;
123. Andrew Hindmoor, Rational Choice (Basingstoke, Hants.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 190-2.
124. Ken Binmore, Playing for Real: A Text on Game Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 111, emphasis added.
125. 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'
126. (Keith Dowding, 'Revealed Preference Theory', unpublished manuscript).
127. Phillip Pettit, The Common Mind, pp. 272-8;
128. 'Functional Explanation and Virtual Selection', British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 47(1996), 291-302;
129. and 'Rational Choice, Functional Selection and Empty Black Boxes', Journal of Economic Methodology, 7(2000), 33-57.
130. Amartya Sen, 'Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioural Foundations of Economic Theory', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 6(1977), 317-44.
131. Pettit, 'Rational Choice, Functional Selection', p. 42.
132. Pettit, 'Rational Choice, Functional Selection', p. 42.
133. Robert Lane, 'What Rational Choice Explains', in Friedman, ed., The Rational Choice Controversy, pp. 107-26, at p. 124.
134. Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960).
135. 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 Ole Røgeberg and Morten Nordberg, 'A Defence of Absurd Theories in Economics', Journal of Economic Methodology, 12(2005), 543-62, p. 544. (Pubitemid 43024431)
136. Andrew Schotter, 'Strong and Wrong: The Use of Rational Choice Theory in Experimental Economics', Journal of Theoretical Politics, 18(2006), 498-511. (Pubitemid 44342855)
137. Schotter, 'Strong and Wrong', p. 504.
138. Schotter, 'Strong and Wrong', p. 500.
139. Frank Hindriks, 'False Models as Explanatory Engines', Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 38(2008), 334-60.
140. Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957).
141. This research is reviewed in Andrew Hindmoor, Rational Choice (Basingstoke, Hants.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 30-45.
142. Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), p. 2.
143. Chong, 'Mysterious Rivals', p. 39.
144. Robert Goodin, 'Institutional Design and Rational Choice', in Robert Goodin, ed., The Theory of Institutional Design (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996);
145. Brennan and Hamlin, Economising on Virtue.
146. Hay, 'Theory, Stylized Heuristic or Self-fulfilling Prophecy'.
147. Tsebelis, Veto Players.
148. Green and Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice, p. 32.
149. Gary Cox, 'The Empirical Content of Rational Choice Theory: A Reply to Green and Shapiro', Journal of Theoretical Politics, 11(1999), 147-69, p. 162.
150. The Newtonian example is taken from Harold Kincaid, Philosophical Foundations of the Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 55.
151. The strongest defence of unification as a goal of explanation is still that provided by Philip Kitcher, 'Explanatory Unification and the Causal Structure of the World', in Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon, eds, Scientific Explanation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).
152. Russell Hardin, One for All: The Logic of Group Conflict (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1995).
153. Harold Kincaid, Philosophical Foundations of the Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 97.
154. Ian Shapiro, The Flight from Reality in the Human Sciences (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 2005).
155. Uskali Maki, 'On the Method of Isolation in Economics', Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, 26(1992), 316-51, p. 321.
156. Caterina Marchionni, 'Contrastive Explanation and Unrealistic Models: The Case of the New Economic Geography' Journal of Economic Methodology, 13(2006), 425-46;
157. Menno Rol, 'Idealization, Abstraction, and the Policy Relevance of Economic Theories', Journal of Economic Methodology, 15(2008), 69-97;
158. Frank Hindriks, 'Tractability Assumptions and the Musgrave-Maki Typology', Journal of Economic Methodology, 13(2006), 401-23;
159. and Hindricks, 'False Models as Explanatory Engines'.
160. Tyler Cowen, '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);
161. Thomas Schelling, 'Models of Segregation', American Economic Review, 59(1969), 488-93;
162. 'Dynamic Models of Segregation', Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 1(1971), 143-86;
163. and Micromotives and Macrobehavior (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978).
164. 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 N. Emrah Aydinonat, 'Models, Conjectures and Exploration: An Analysis of Schelling's Checkerboard Model of Residential Segregation', Journal of Economic Methodology, 14(2007), 429-54.
165. Robert Sugden, 'Credible Worlds: The Status of Theoretical Models in Economics', Journal of Economic Methodology, 7(2000), 1-31.
166. Marchionni, 'Contrastive Explanation and Unrealistic Models', p. 428.
167. 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'
168. (John Ferejohn, 'Rational Choice Theory and Social Explanation', Economics and Philosophy, 18(2002), 211-34, p. 226).
169. Olson, Logic of Collective Action, p. 16.
170. Chong, 'Mysterious Rivals', pp. 52-3.
171. Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, p. 27.
172. Hindmoor, Rational Choice, pp. 122-5.
173. Nancy Cartwright, 'The Vanity of Rigor in Economics: Theoretical Models and Galilean Experiments', in Hunting Causes and Using Them (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 217-61.
174. Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy;
175. Olson, The Logic of Collective Action;
176. and William Riker, The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1962).