Transcript Week 10: Interaction and Confrontation bet. Area Studies

Week 10.
Interaction and Confrontation bet.
Area Studies and Disciplines –
The Rational Choice Theory?
I 34028 Sakhayaana
I 31012 So Hee
<1>
Preconception VS Observation
or the Contribution of Rational Choice Theory and
Area Studies to Contemporary Political Science.
by Chalmers Johnson
Rational Choice Theory
• Ideological development accompanied the end of
the Cold War.
• The attempt to apply neo-classical theory model
of a market to politics.
• Maximize utility and profits, minimize outlay.
• Laissez faire
RCT's basic premises are
(1) Human beings base their behavior on rational
calculations.
(2) They act with rationality when making choices.
(3) Their choices are aimed at optimization of their
pleasure or profit.
Robert H. Bates
• Robert H. Bates is Eaton Professor
of the Science of Government at
Harvard University. His research
focuses on the political economy of
development, particularly in Africa,
and on violence and state failure.
• Outspoken fan of RCT.
Professor Bates as RC theorist
and his attack on area studies
• ‘scientist’ ≠ non-Anglo-American research based
scholars
• Area studies has failed to generate scientific
knowledge
• Area specialist are humanists
• ‘defection’ – commitment to the study of “history,
languages and culture”
• “I have long regarded area programs as a problem for
political science”
Two Ironies of the we-too-can-beeconomist Fad in Political Science
1) RCT represents one of the last gasps of ‘modernism’.
2) RCT is occurring just as the model science,
economics, is starting back away from its basic theory.
RCT on the concept of Culture
– Culture is particular society’s structure of values
and how this interacts with its division of labor
©Thomas S. Kuhn
• RCT fails to understand the concept of culture that it
repeatedly attacks.
• Ignores cultural development and change.
• It puerile and appears merely to reflect the
particular narrowness of America culture.
Verstehen(understanding) Problem
• Area specialist → ‘gold miner’
• RC theorist → ‘master goldsmith’
•
HOWEVER, RC theorist do not produce beautiful
objects but junk and real area specialist have a much
better record of producing theory.
Neo-classical economic theory
1) oversimplifies the dynamics of human motivation.
2) misunderstand that civil society needs political rights.
3) misprices the things
• The model of the neoclassical market does not
recognize that state and market coexist symbiotically.
Conclusion
• Neither neoclassical economics nor RCT provides a
mechanical alternative to genuine social science
analysis, i.e. what political science but no other
discipline of the social sciences calls area studies.
<2>
The Disciplines of Political Science:
Studying the Culture of Rational Choice
as a Case in Point
by Ian S. Lustick
Nomothetic view vs. Idiographic view
Nomothetic
Idiographic
Scholarship
Theory driven
Characteristic
General, Whole
Area based
Knowledge-driven
Unique, Individual
Method
Covering laws
Direct immersion
But!
• Some parts of nomothetic approach is based on “theories”.
• Some parts of idiographic approach is based on
“understood but unexplained truths”.
4 Main Disciplines of Political Science
1) Rational choice and game theoretic formal modeling
2) Eclectic neo-Weberian mid-range theory
3) Thickly descriptive approach (in-depth study)
4) Post modernist and post-structuralist treatments
Major Question
How “culture,” a necessary aspect of any “area study”
project, might be studied by practitioners from each of
the four approaches?
Rational Choice and
Game Theoretic formal modeling
According to Bates,
Game
theories
Institutions
Cultures
• Cultures are distinguished by their distinctive institutions.
• Game theories are advanced as specially designed tools to
analyze institutions.
→ Then, game theory is designed to study cultures!
• Then, How might game theorists (rational theorists) suggest
and find out answers about the culture of rational choice
theory?
Rational Choice and
Game Theoretic formal modeling
• Unit of analysis: Choice (among the distinctive
institutions, histories, and understandings)
• The culture of rational choice theorists would be studied
as the intended or unintended consequences of choices
and as control on choice.
• The object is to suggest the problem of what kind of
game, what sort of formal model of interactive rational
decisions, what sort of information availability would
logically produce patterns of behavior, attitude, and
expectations similar to observed patterns to be judged
satisfying by other rational choice theorists.
Mid-range theory
• Neo-Gramscian theory of “wars of position.”
• The school which Bates represents would be seen to achieve
complete domination of the discipline of political science.
• If successful, “Politics would be reclothed as culture.”
(Gramsci)
• The object is to redefine, recategorize, reformulate
discourses, and establish working compromises with key rivals
within the rich diversity of dominant culture.
• “Theory = Rational choice theory”
“Game theoretic modeling = Political economy”
“Mathmathics = important measure of competence”
“Area Studies = not as an intellectual rival, but as a necessary
complement to the social sciences
Thickly descriptive approach
• It was adopted by most area studies specialists.
• Field research, so it requires a great deal of language
proficiency.
• Aggregate-date researchers might wish to know
whether the congruence hypothesis applies to
rational choice culture.
• This kind of research would produce data highly
relevant to the general theoretical question of
whether culture can be either chosen or given.
Post-modern approach
• Unit of Analysis: Practice
• The observed practices of rational choice scholars
suggest quite obvious deconstructive possibilities.
• The culture of the most “centered” and modernist of
all modern paradigms would be shown to summarize
the de-centered post-modern moment.
Conclusion
• Collaborative Research Networks
- International interconnected arrays of workshops,
publications, conferences, and other projects from a variety
of disciplinary and methodological perspective
(American Council of Learned Societies).
• Within the overall context of the CRN, a variety of
within-paradigm and cross-paradigm activities is
possible, focusing attention on similar substantive
problems, no matter how differently characterized
and probed.
<3>
Rational Choice Analysis and
Area Studies
Enemies or Partners?
by Margatet A. Mackean
Three Objectives of the article
(1) To suggest what rational choice analysis and
some of its subdomains and branches include,
(2) To distinguish rational choice as an analytic
paradigm from the full right-to left range of
ideological views,
(3) To build methodically on these distinctions to
understand the implications of rational choice
analysis for scholars in area studies who seek to
understand particular societies.
Origins and Development of
Rational Choice Analysis
Two primary assumptions in rational choice theory
1) Individuals have preferences.
2) They try to pursue those preferences.
- Rational individuals will not exert effort from which
they gain no utility.
- It is difficult to exclude noncontributors from
consumption of collective goods.
Origins and Development of
Rational Choice Analysis
• Collective Choice Theory
- The body of work that focuses on interdependent choices and
especially on solving collective action dilemmas.
- Collective choice theorists figure out how collective actions happens.
• Game theory
- A particular method of diagramming the interactive choices that
rational actors might make when they make individual but
interdependent decisions. (Collective action dilemma)
• Methodological individualism
- It stipulates simply that the collective action insight demonstrates to
us that we do not understand the behavior of a group until we under
the choices make by the individuals in it.
Optional Nonnormative Derivations
for Those Interested in Politics
• The Principal-Agent Problem
- Two individuals have different (real) preferences and one of them
is in some formal sense the boss (principal), trying to order the
other one (the “agent) to do something.
• Regulatory Capture
- The principal has very few resources at her disposal to influence
the agent, but the agent who is subject to regulation has vastly
more resources than the principal does.
• Rent-Seeking
- Changing public policy from widely advertised public goals to
private ones.
Ideological Prescriptions that combine Normative
Values with Rational Choice Derivations
The Leftlibertarians
Economic
conservatives
The Rightlibertarians
The poor,
Underrepresented
Pro market and
anti-governmentalist
The rich, Elites,
Represented
faith in government’s
work: especially
redressing the balance
between the rich and
the poor.
Impossible to produce
collective goods through
political process.
Faith to protect liberty,
property rights, provide
court enforcement, but
gov only intervene in the
market in special
occasion.
Faith to produce ordered
markets, protection of
property rights, and a
legal system to enforce
contracts, but no faith in
government to do
anything else.
Criticisms of Rational Choice Analysis
Critiques
People have clear preference ordering
before choosing
Defense
Irrational behavior exists
Failing to explain where preferences come Does not attempt to explain it
from
Being mechanically inept to explain
situation choosing between conflicting
preferences
World is messy and troubled place
People spend all their time acquiring data
about their options
Calculating and collecting data ahead of
time
Being tautological
Practitioners do too often use behavior as
the indicator of preferences
People are materialistic and greedy of
that all of their preferences can be
quantified
RC analysis is not the same as the
researcher’s values
Strengths of Rational Choice Analysis
1) Treat the initial assumptions of RC as temporary and
testable. It gives opportunity to examine the real world
once again with greater care than before.
2) Collective action insight. Real people do have these
problems convince that the assumptions are right.
Rational Choice and Area Studies
• Productive partnership
• Agronomist story
• “RCT is simple but useful tool that forces
people to ask one more round of questions
that leads to discover variety in cultural values
and institutions along with other generalities
in the human condition.”
• RCT=common sense
Conclusion
• Rational choice might appear to be a perspective
that would be attractive to generalists seeking
universal laws of human behavior, but its universal
claims are quite innocuous (not risky) in assuming
only that people have preferences of some kind and
try to pursue them.
Discussion
• How do you evaluate rational choice theory as one of
the tools to study area studies?
• Can we conduct Area Studies by Rational decisions?
What about Social Science?