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Analytic Narratives Revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Robert Bates ,
Avner Greif ,
Margaret Levi ,
Jean-Laurent Rosenthal  and
Barry Weingast
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Extract

We welcome the animated debate raised by Analytic Narratives concerning social scientific methods and the scope of rational choice. Advocates of mathematical and rational models have long claimed they have much to tell us about situations where behavior can be quantified or where the situation under study recurs many times. However, it was thought impermissible for rational choice theories (and rational choice) to venture into the analysis of big events. Political scientists like Gary King, Robert Keohane, and Sidney Verba (1994) implicitly conceded the issue by concentrating on the problem of case selection when the number of cases is small but greater than one.We believe unique events are too important to leave aside, and we use rational choice, particularly game theory, as a means to study unique events.

Type
Symposium on Robert H. Bates, Avner Greif, Margaret Levi, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, and Barry R. Weingast's Analytic Narratives
Information
Social Science History , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , winter 2000 , pp. 685 - 696
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2000 

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Footnotes

a1

Bates (1997) and Levi (1997) have already published their book-length manuscripts. Weingast and Greif are working on theirs. Rosenthal’s article here was distinct from the work in the manuscript he has been completing.

References

Bates, R. H. (1997) Open Economy Politics: The Political Economy of the World Coffee Trade. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Geary, J. W. (1991) We Need Men: The Union Draft in the Civil War. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
King, G. R. Keohane, and Verba, S. (1994) Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Levi, M. (1997) Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar