Initial speculation about Nord Stream reveals both the strengths and limitations of using international-relations models to make sense of unfolding events
Why Would Putin Sabotage Nord Stream?
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rational choice
Pragmatism and Game Theory, Part 1
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Eric Grynaviski, who is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University. The recurring debate on this blog has centered on some of...
Should We Keep Hidden the Way People Behave When their Actions are Hidden?
In his most recent post, PTJ argues that "things like Freakonomics are basically corrosive and should be opposed whenever practicable". While he repeats in that post (and the comments section) a...
The Society of Individuals
Although I have made many of the points I am about to make in comments posted on Phil's and Eric's posts about rational choice theory over the past week, what I want to do at this point is to pull...
More rational choice Posts
The Relational Sociology of Rational-Choice Theory
Editor's Note: This is a guest post by Eric Grynaviski, who is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University. There has been a debate on the Duck lately about the meaning of rational choice theory and game theory, and how it’s different from varied alternative approaches (here, here, and here). I wanted to offer a different interpretation than Arena and Jackson. Both give pretty orthodox interpretations, where game theory treats human agents as economic agents interested in maximizing their utility. I wanted to offer a sociologically richer interpretation,...
Rational Choice and Selfishness
In his latest post, PTJ moves us past the worst critiques of "rational choice theory" and focuses on a few more nuanced concerns.1 I'm glad to see the conversation progressing, and this type of exchange is one of the things I love most about academic blogging. However, I find some of PTJ's arguments problematic. I argued last week that most criticisms of "rational choice" amount to attempts to persuade graduate students not to learn a language because its speakers don't often discuss the right topics. That's worrisome, because insofar as concerns about the narrow focus of those who speak...
A Certain Kind of Selfishness
This is more of a riff on Phil's post from last week than a direct reply; the post that Dan and I wrote addresses more directly the issue of actor autonomy that we think Phil misunderstood us on we and Phil were clearly on different semantic pages, so I am not going to go back over that ground here. Instead -- and since we all basically agree that rational choice theory, as a species of decision-theoretic analysis, is located someplace in the tension between self-action and inter-action -- I want to pursue a more specific point, the criticism of decision-theoretic accounts on both...
Actor Autonomy in Choice-Theoretic Accounts
Note: this post was co-written with PTJ. Apologies for the comparative lack of structure and the fact that it is a bit repetitive. Note also that it contains a link to a temporarily un-gated copy of Jackson and Nexon (1999). Thanks, SAGE! In yesterday morning's post, Phil writes: One manifestation of this misunderstanding is that “rational choice” or “choice-theoretic” work is often said to favor the agency side of the structure-versus-agency debate. See, for example, this recent post by Dan Nexon, or the paper it’s based on. I don’t mean to single my Duck colleagues out, though — the...
What Exactly is Rational Choice?
I sometimes surprise people when I say that I have no idea what rational choice is.1 How can a game theorist say such a thing? Especially one who spends so much time on the internet arguing about rational choice? Well, of course I have some idea what it is. The point is that there is no coherent body of work which possesses the properties so frequently attributed to "rational choice." Approximately 99% of all statements I've seen made about rational choice are demonstrably false. About half assert that rational choice leaves no room for things I've seen incorporated into...
In Defense of Homo Economicus
In this post, I seek not to defend the actions or priorities of a non-existent misanthropic being, but to defend the practice of analyzing models that assume human behavior mirrors that of Homo Economicus. (I hope you'll forgive me for choosing a slightly misleading title in order to preserve space.) It's easy to criticize those who assume that human beings are ultra-materialistic, narrowly self-interested, willing to collect all available information (and perhaps in possession of information that isn't available), and immune to mistakes. I have never met such a creature and hope that I...
Regional Variation in the Explanatory Power of War and Reason
Many conversations about the empirical relevance of game-theoretic models of war begin and end with Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman's War and Reason. That's unfortunate, but it's not exactly surprising. Most game-theoretic studies of war do not include any empirical analysis, whereas War and Reason offered a systematic analysis of European dyads. The standards by which BdM and Lalman would have the predictions of the International Interactions Game (IIG) be judged are clear. In the Behavioral Origins of War, Bennett and Stam seek to assess the relative explanatory power of all the major...