Intersection or Collision Course? A Critical Look at Rational Choice Theory and Normative Political Theory

Few methods of political inquiry have sparked such heated debate among academics such as rational choice theory. As Grafstein states; “(l)ike abortion rights, pluralism, and original intent, rational-choice theory has become a topic on which any self-respecting political scientist is embarrassed not to have an opinion ” (Grafstein 1992: 259). Advocates of rational choice theory argue that it is a viable method of practicing social science, while its critics dismiss it as a vehicle for “economic imperialism” (Zafirovski 2000). A lot of the objections have come from normative political theorists (Bohman 1992), but voices of criticism also come from political scientists outside of normative political theory, most famously by Donald P. Green and Ian Shapiro in their book Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory. While Green and Shapiro argue that most rational choice models do not stand up to empirical scrutiny (Green and Shapiro 1994: 9), normative political theorists along with psychologists and sociologists generally take aim at the assumptions that rational choice theorists make about human nature and society. The general argument that I want to make in this paper is that most of these criticisms are unfounded, and really centre around one critique, viz., that some rational choice theorists had an ideological bias towards promarket conservatism, which led them to engage in shoddy empirical research and make assumptions that were flawed. I argue here that rational choice theory can operate on assumptions that do not betray any ideological bias. Certainly there have been some right-wing rational choice theorists, but that does not mean that rational choice theory is necessarily right wing. It can operate on any ideological bias, but I believe that in order for rational choice to be a true descriptive enterprise it should try to avoid ideological biases. This can compliment the prescriptive nature of normative political theory