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Is Rational Choice Theory All of Social Science? / Mark I. Lichbach.
By Mark Irving Lichbach University of Michigan Press
Copyright © 2003 Mark Irving Lichbach
All right reserved. ISBN: 0472098195
Chapter 1 - Three Approaches to Foils Chapter 1 offers a new way to understand intellectual opponents. I explore rational choice theory and its foils (sect. 1.1), social science theories and their foils (sect. 1.2), and foils in the academy (sect. 1.3). I then elaborate my hopes for this book (sect. 1.4).
1.1. Rational Choice Theory and Its Foils Rational choice theorists in political science have passed through three phases in approaching their opposition--the culturalists who study values and the structuralists who explore institutions.
In the beginning, when their paradigm was underdeveloped, rationalists viewed their opposition as worthy foils, serious alternatives for explaining the world. Anthony Downs (1957) and Mancur Olson (1971), the key developers of the spatial theory of voting and of collective action theory, respectively, sought to win a seat for rational choice theory at the political science table. Brian Barry (1978), for another example, argued that rationalist theories were different from and better than the hegemonic culturalist alternatives. In the middle phase, when the power of such nuts and bolts as the Prisoner's Dilemma and spatial games became clear, rationalists came to view their foils pragmatically as irrelevant and thus not worth engaging. Rationalists were only interested in getting important results and running with them. Thus Downs's (1957) followers McKelvey (1976) and Shepsle (1979) elaborated spatial theory, and Olson's (1971) followers Taylor (1976) and Axelrod (1984) elaborated collective action theory. And rational choice institutionalists North and Weingast (1989) analyzed the Glorious Revolution without exploring such competing historiographic claims as Skocpol's (1979) structuralism.
Nonetheless, even as rational choice theory now reaches the peak of its intellectual dominance in political science, it has not vanquished its opponents. Indeed, Green and Shapiro (1994) and others have mounted stinging counterattacks. Militant antipositivists marching under the banners of interpretivism, constructivism, and postmodernism have created a conflict dynamic of movement-countermovement in which the sides dig in their heels. Unable to kill off its opponents, a third perspective has thus emerged within rational choice theory--that its foils are companions to be synthesized. Bates, de Figueiredo, and Weingast thus "explore the possibilities for theoretical integration by suggesting how some of the fundamental concepts used by interpretivists can be incorporated into rational choice theory" (1998, 606). Levi, Ostrom, and Alt predict success: "We expect the next century to witness a major flowering of scientific achievement across the social sciences similar to the neo-Darwinian synthesis of this past century in biology" (1999, 337).
Having accommodated culturalists by incorporating social norms and structuralists by incorporating institutions into an individualistic decision calculus, rationalists appear to be claiming that rational choice theory now constitutes the entirety of social science. If rational choice theory can indeed provide the microfoundations for a new intellectual center in political science, what need is there for other types of theories? Wallerstein, for example, writes that "the only theory in comparative politics today that is sufficiently powerful and general to be a serious contender for the unified theory is rational choice" (2001, 1). And if rational choice theory is all of social science (a generalization of Stinchcombe 1980), what need is there for other types of social scientists? Coleman (1990), a prominent sociologist, attempts to show that rational choice theory can explain just about everything in economics, sociology, political science, anthropology, psychology, and history. Sociologist Collins thus poses the question: "Can rational action theory unify social science?" (1996, 329).
How rationalists approach their opponents--whether in terms of competition, pragmatism, or synthesis--affects the extent to which peace and progress prevail in the social sciences. In exploring these alternative approaches to intellectual foils, this book seeks to evaluate how rationalists grapple with academic opponents who stubbornly refuse to submit to their hegemony.
1.2. Social Scientific Theories and Their Foils Although I write from the perspective of a rational choice theorist, I develop the important subtheme that culturalists and structuralists relate to other research communities just as rationalists do. That is, social scientific communities of all stripes--not just rationalists--have their competitors who pick fights with their opponents, their pragmatists who ignore other approaches, and their imperialists who claim that their approach is the totality of social science.
More generally, as table 1.1 shows, the intellectual history of social science can be said to begin and end either with one or with multiple theories, and hence three metanarratives are possible (Levine 1995). Pragmatists are Whigs who believe that social science progresses from one theory to a better version of that theory. Synthesizers are lumpers who believe that social science progresses from many starting points to one higher end point, from pluralism to monopoly. Competitors reject the idea of unilinear progress and emphasize pluralism, dialogue, and diversity. They argue that internal factors (e.g., specialization and the division of labor) and external forces (e.g., trends, cycles, and shocks) move disciplines and fields from one or many starting points to several end points. Competitors come in two varieties: splitters believe that inquiry moves from one theory to many theories, and relativists argue that social science is in eternal unresolvable flux.
Most social scientists are myopic pragmatists concerned only with their own research community. They work with one model paradigm and ignore their foils. For MacIntyre (1990), the use of models as a form of theory is "tradition"--a community's conversation, a debate with the past that is oriented toward the future to produce an understanding of a community's successes and failures, achievements and frustrations, and ultimately its scope and limitations. Pragmatists strive for "normal"--liberal or Whiggish--scientific progress within their particular research tradition.
Parsons (1937), by contrast, was the visionary lumper who attempted to move sociology beyond Durkheim, Weber, Pareto, and Marshall and toward a single synthetic paradigm--his own. As Eckstein's (1963) classic survey revealed, many comparativists followed his attempt to create a single voluntaristic theory of action out of theoretical chaos. Synthesizers believe that rationalists, culturalists, and structuralists hold important assumptions that are consistent with one another and that the different models can be complementary or part of a more general model. They thus emphasize the interpenetration of rationality, culture, and structure; the convergence among research communities toward a single center; and hence the accumulation of knowledge that culminates in tests of a single explanation of some domain, problem, or puzzle. MacIntyre (1990) aptly calls this form of theory "encyclopedia." It aims to provide a single unified framework that is objectively true and hence uniting and universal. Sometimes the synthesis comes from a consortium of different research communities and sometimes from what amounts to the same thing: a very thick version of one hegemonic community.
A recent symposium on theory in comparative politics (
World Politics 1995) also stressed the value of synthesis toward a disciplinary center. Comparativists were told that they should work toward "the eclectic messy center that has constituted the traditional core of the study of comparative politics." Indeed, the consensus among the symposium's participants was that it is good to be part of the consensus: most should practice "theoretically informed empirical political analysis" and adopt "diverse conceptual lenses" and "eclectic combinations." Since "comparative politics is very much a problem-driven field of study" concerned with solving "real-world puzzles," comparativists should be interested in "questions" and "empirical puzzles" (2, 5, 46, 10). Most comparativists today indeed stress the virtues of what Almond refers to as "the great cafeteria of the center" and emphasize the dangers of "separate tables" (1990, 16).
Structuralist theories continue to dominate the field of comparative politics. Yet the rationalists, like the barbarians at the gate, are coming, and the postmodern culturalists are not far behind. The participants in the
World Politics symposium apparently feared the struggle that might ensue. Perhaps some feared rationalist and culturalist challenges to their intellectual hegemony.
Lying outside this consensus, at least at one point in the past, was Harry Eckstein, who stressed the alternative of working with models from a strong research community. Along with Gurr (Eckstein and Gurr 1975) he developed a framework of "authority patterns" that was intended to train graduate students in comparative politics. Eckstein (1980) also recognized the value of foils, or crucial confrontations between distinct research traditions, especially between rationalist and culturalist theories. He advanced, for example, an "explanation sketch" or "ideal type" approach to competing theories of protest and rebellion.
Dahrendorf (1958) was also a splitter or even a relativist who saw Marxist and functionalist theories locked in a fundamental struggle. One may say that today's reemergence of multiple perspectives in social theory--rationalist, culturalist, and structuralist--represents the failure of the Parsonian synthesis and the return to the issues raised by Dahrendorf. The competitors' approach to social theory maintains that different perspectives hold fundamentally incompatible assumptions that are, in the economic sense, substitutes and not complements. Splitters thus emphasize the differentiation of rationality, culture, and structure; the divergence among research communities; and hence the contrast that culminates in competitive evaluations and even crucial experiments. MacIntyre (1990) calls the use of foils a form of theory "genealogy," which involves acknowledging multiple perspectives on truth.
In sum, in social science today one finds three alternative perspectives on foils: competitors (splitters or relativists) probing the rationalist, culturalist, and structuralist research programs, pragmatists doing normal science, and lumpers developing a monopolistic center.
1.3. Foils in the Academy While competition, pragmatism, and synthesis can offer three valuable perspectives on the multiple research communities in the social sciences, each can degenerate into intellectual folly.
Those who adopt a competitive perspective can reify the debate and hence contribute to irreconcilable confrontations. Such skirmishes, moreover, can degenerate into intolerance and ultimately war--a battle of the paradigms. Those who adopt the pragmatic perspective can ignore paradigmatic debates and create an isolated and insular cult seeking to become a hegemonic center. Searching for a very deep story within one's research tradition can lead scholars to the monotheistic conclusion that there is only one story to be told and hence only one intellectual path to be taken. Finally, those who adopt the synthetic perspective can transcend the debate and contribute to a messy center. Combinations of the three approaches can be ad hoc. Syntheses can ignore fundamental differences in ontology, methodology, and research strategy, resulting in theories that may be congruent with the real world but only because they are as messy and incoherent as that world.
Competitors, pragmatists, and lumpers nevertheless have valid places in the academy, despite the threat of degeneration. Consider MacIntyre's view of the university
as a place of constrained disagreement, of imposed participation in conflict, in which a central responsibility of higher education would be to initiate students into conflict. In such a university those engaged in teaching and enquiry would each have to play a double role. For, on the one hand, each of us would be participating in conflict as the protagonist of a particular point of view, engaged thereby in two distinct but related tasks. The first of these would be to advance enquiry from within that particular point of view. . . . The second task would be to enter into controversy with other rival standpoints, doing so both in order to exhibit what is mistaken in that rival standpoint in the light of the understanding afforded by one's own point of view and in order to test and retest the central theses advanced from one's own point of view against the strongest possible objections to them to be derived from one's opponents. . . . On the other hand, each of us would also have to play a second role, that not of a partisan, but of someone concerned to uphold and to order the ongoing conflicts, to provide and sustain institutionalized means for their expression, to negotiate the modes of encounter between opponents, to ensure that rival voices were not illegitimately suppressed, to sustain the university . . . as an arena of conflict in which the most fundamental type of moral and theological disagreement was accorded recognition. (1990, 330)
Self-interest and the public good, in this account, dictate that some social scientists be pragmatists who advance claims from within their own tradition; that others be competitors who dispute claims from competing traditions, maintaining sufficient "ethical neutrality" and distance from any tradition so as to be able to listen to and react against alternative traditions; and that still others be lumpers who monitor the discourse among traditions and communities so as to assure an open and honest dialogue that identifies points of convergence.
A sophisticated understanding of political science, social science, and the academy thus leads to a healthy disputationalist position. Each perspective on foils, that is, has its scholarly value. Rational choice theorists, the current contenders for hegemony, would do well to make more effective use of competing research frameworks: by ignoring their opponents and developing their approach as a
baseline model with boundaries; by viewing their opponents' arguments as
worthy foils; and by offering a
candidate synthesis to resolve the tension between model and foil. The results are nested models to be evaluated against the evidence. Thus, as I will argue in the concluding chapter, rational choice theory needs a philosophy of science oriented toward competitive theory evaluation to complement a philosophy of social science oriented toward alternative rationalist, culturalist, and structuralist theories.
1.4. My Hope for This Book My assumption throughout this book is that all research is conducted within a framework of theories, concepts, and methods and hence that theoretical criticism assists concrete empirical work. A more critical understanding of these frameworks--referred to as social theory--is therefore an important way to elaborate, reformulate, and extend substantive insights. Indeed, the only way to overcome the trained incapacities produced by outdated philosophies of science and social science that twist us into knots (e.g., the microfoundation trap discussed in sect. 4.1.2) is to strive for a more secure philosophical foundation for what we do. Rationalists in particular need to reflect on their underlying presuppositions, to be reflexive and self-critical, and to be willing to publicly explicate and defend their commitments.
This book thus argues the disputationalist position that using competing frameworks can make better rational choice theories. Rational choice theorists have thrown down the gauntlet, so let them take the lead in stimulating a dialogue among the various research communities that produces creative engagements. Let them explore the different structure-action combinations of interests, identities, and institutions that guide inquiry. Let them operate as believers who raise questions and nonbelievers who wrestle with the answers. The alternative is to be a community of theoretical philistines, in which case rational choice theorists will not be able to solve actual substantive problems.
There is a joke about a king who stages an opera contest--after hearing the first singer, he gives the prize to the second. Rationalists have acted as if they were similarly fatigued by the inadequacies of existing structural and cultural theories and hence wanted to move on to something else. The controversies that swirl around rational choice theory, however, cannot be addressed by ignoring other theoretical traditions and exploring only rational choice theory. Moreover, the best way to understand rational choice theory is to understand how it approaches other research communities. In the long run, only rationalists open to the similarities and differences among the various research traditions and communities can build better rational choice theories. And rationalists should be intellectually broad enough to admire--and study--the "other." In sum, a hegemonic rationalist social science does not serve the interests of rational choice theorists. As Heschel warned, "All power corrupts, including the power of reason" (1995, 196).
By exploring its foils--work not done in the rational choice tradition--this book therefore offers a unique and valuable perspective on rational choice theory.
Continues...
Excerpted from Is Rational Choice Theory All of Social Science? / Mark I. Lichbach. by Mark Irving Lichbach Copyright © 2003 by Mark Irving Lichbach. Excerpted by permission.
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