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Rationalist Theories of Politics: A Midterm Report

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MayhewDavid R., Congress: The Electoral Connection. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1974, 194 pp., $7.95.
NiskanenWilliam A.Jr., Bureaucracy and Representative Government. Chicago and New York: Aldine-Atherton, 1971, 232 pp., $9.95.
RabushkaAlvin and ShepsleKenneth A., Politics in Plural Societies: A Theory of Democratic Instability. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill, 1972, 232 pp., $10.95.

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Ronald Rogowski
Ronald Rogowski
Affiliation:
Duke University
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Abstract

Rational-choice theories of politics have gained acceptance rapidly and may soon dominate the field. Their popularity is due in part to their real successes, which can be demonstrated in several areas, and to their hypothetical-deductive structure. But some students, in their eagerness to embrace what is by now a theoretical fad, have either ignored inconvenient facts or weakened the theory to fit them. Both the promise and the risk are demonstrated by reference to recent works by Mayhew, Niskanen, Rabushka and Shepsle, and de Swaan.

Type
Review Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , January 1978 , pp. 296 - 323
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Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1978

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References

1 For a definition of the concept, see Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1962)Google Scholar, chaps. 9 and 10.

2 For an excellent, if hostile, sketch of the formal-legal method, see Macridis, Roy C., The Study of Comparative Government (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday 1955)Google Scholar, chap. 1.

3 Parallel shifts occurred in comparative and in international studies. In comparative work, the pioneers were Catlin, Merriam, and Lasswell; in the international field, Schuman, Spykman, and Carr. See, respectively, Eckstein, Harry, “A Perspective on Comparative Politics, Past and Present”, in Eckstein, Harry and Apter, David, eds., Comparative Politics: A Reader (New York: Free Press of Glencoe 1963), 17,Google Scholar and Rogowski, , “International Politics: The Past as Science”, International Studies Quarterly, XII (December 1968), 401–8.Google Scholar

4 Dahl, Robert A., “The Behavioral Approach in Political Science: Epitaph for a Monument to a Successful Protest”, American Political Science Review [hereafter cited as APSR], Vol. 55 (December 1961), 763–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Somit, Albert and Tanenhaus, Joseph, The Development of American Political Science: From Burgess to Behavioralism (Boston: Allyn and Bacon 1967), 183–90.Google Scholar

5 The seminal works in political science were, of course, Almond, Gabriel, “Comparative Political Systems”, Journal of Politics, XVIII (August 1956), 391–409CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Easton, David, “An Approach to the Analysis of Political Systems”, World Politics, IX (April 1957), 383–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In both, the debt to Talcott Parsons is explicit. The influence of these two theories is suggested not only by the copious references to their original proponents, but by the dominant position in the discipline of areas of research that derive from them: political socialization; political values, norms, orientations; the performance and responsiveness of political systems; deprivation and its political consequences.

6 The most lucid and, I hope, not accidentally the most influential statement of these opposed alternatives has been Barry's, BrianSociologists, Economists and Democracy (London: Collier-Macmillan; Toronto: Macmillan 1970)Google Scholar, esp. chaps. 1 and 4. To identify rationalism with “the economic approach” is, however, misleading: nearly all economics is rationalist, but not all rationalist work is economic. See beolw, p. 303.

7 Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row 1957)Google Scholar; Olson, , The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1965Google Scholar; New York: Schocken 1968); Arrow, , Social Choice and Individual Values (New York: John Wiley and Sons 1951)Google Scholar; Fishburn, , The Theory of Social Choice (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1973)Google Scholar; Schelling, , The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1960Google Scholar; New York: Oxford University Press, Galaxy Books 1963); Boulding, , Conflict and Defense: A General Theory (New York: Harper and Brothers 1962)Google Scholar; Axelrod, , Conflict of Interest: A Theory of Divergent Goals with Application to Politics (Chicago: Markham 1970)Google Scholar; Black, , The Theory of Committees and Elections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1958)Google Scholar; Farquharson, , Theory of Voting (New Haven: Yale University Press 1962)Google Scholar; Leiserson, , “Factions and Coalitions in One-Party Japan: An Interpretation Based on the Theory of Games”, APSR, Vol. 62 (September 1968), 770–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Game Theory and the Study of Coalition Behavior”, in Groennings, Sven, Kelley, E. W., and Leiserson, Michael, eds., The Study of Coalition Behavior: Theoretical Perspectives and Cases from Four Continents (New York: Holt, Rinehart … Winston 1970), 255–72.Google Scholar

8 Kuhn (fn. 1), 10–11 and chap. 3.

9 Rawls, , A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 1971)Google Scholar. As merely one example of the response among students of politics, see the symposium in APSR, Vol. 69 (June 1975), 588–674.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 See, among others, Hirschman, Albert O., Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1970)Google Scholar; Rogowski, , Rational Legitimacy: A Theory of Political Support (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1974)Google Scholar; Buchanan, James and Tullock, Gordon, The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 1962)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Frohlich, Norman, Oppenheimer, Joe A., and Young, Oran R., Political Leadership and Collective Goods (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1971)Google Scholar; Tullock, Gordon, The Politics of Bureaucracy (Washington: Public Affairs Press 1965)Google Scholar; Downs, Anthony, Inside Bureaucracy (Boston: Little, Brown 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the volumes by Niskanen and Mayhew under review here.

11 Articles in rationalist theory, most of them on Downsian spatial analogies, constitutional choice, coalitions, or the “paradox” of voting, have appeared frequently in the APSR since about 1966: see, most recently, the symposium on “Participation, Coalitions, Vote Trading”, APSR, Vol. 69 (September 1975), 908–69Google Scholar. Two textbooks have appeared to date: Riker, William H. and Ordeshook, Peter C., An Introduction to Positive Political Theory (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall 1973)Google Scholar; Brams, Steven J., Game Theory and Politics (New York: Free Press; London: Collier-Macmillan 1975).Google Scholar

12 Harsanyi, , “Rational-Choice Models of Political Behavior vs. Functionalist and Conformist Theories”, World Politics, XXI (July 1969), 513–38;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMitchell, , “The Shape of Political Theory to Come: From Political Sociology to Political Economy”, in Lipset, Seymour Martin, ed., Politics and the Social Sciences (New York: Oxford University Press 1969), 101–36.Google Scholar

13 Barry, Brian, “Review Article: ‘Exit, Voice, and Loyalty’” British Journal of Political Science, IV (January 1974), 79–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 A person's goals are conventionally considered tolerably consistent if they form at least a weak transitive ordering: if, for example, I prefer Ford to Carter, and either prefer Carter to McCarthy or am indifferent between them, then I am tolerably consistent only if I prefer Ford to McCarthy.

15 Since the identical point was made rather emphatically by Downs (fn. 7), 37, almost twenty years ago, I see little excuse for the confusion that still widely prevails.

16 Pareto, Vilfredo, Sociological Writings, ed. by Finer, S. E., trans, by Mirfin, Derick (New York: Praeger 1966), 183Google Scholar; (Treatise on General Sociology, chap. 2, § 150).

17 Weber, Max, Wirtschaft und Gesellschajt: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie (Cologne and Berlin: Kiepenheuer & Witsch 1964), 17–18Google Scholar; (Part 1, chap. 1, § 2).

18 Hempel, , Aspects of Scientific Explanation (New York: Free Press; London: Collier-Macmillan 1965), 166–71.Google Scholar

19 Cf. Pareto's distinction between “logical” and “subjectively logical” actions in The Mind and Society, ed. and trans, by Livingston, Arthur (New York: Harcourt, Brace 1935). I: 76–77Google Scholar; (§ 150).

20 Gurr, , Why Men Rebel (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1970)Google Scholar, chaps. 2–5. See also Davies, James C., “Toward a Theory of Revolution”, American Sociological Review, XXVII (February 1962), 5–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the psychological antecedents of Gurr's work, see particularly his “Psychological Factors in Civil Violence”, World Politics, XX (January 1968), 245–78.Google Scholar

21 Cf. Gurr's rejection of the thesis that “violence is a learned response, rationalistically chosen and dispassionately employed” (fn. 20), 32.

22 The change can be observed in the pages of the Journal of Conflict Resolution beginning about 1967; for an early example, see Douglas, Ann, “The Peaceful Settlement of Industrial and Intergroup Disputes”, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 1 (March 1957), 69–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Specific theories usually predict either the coalition(s) that will form or the division of the benefit, but not both. A lucid first exposure is Davis, Morton D., Game Theory: A Nontechnical Introduction (New York and London: Basic Books 1970). 145–78Google Scholar

24 Leiserson (fn. 7); Rogowski (fa. 10), 198–205. For general reviews of indices of voting power, see Riker and Ordeshook (fn. 11), chap. 6; Brams (fn. 11), chap. 5.

25 See especially Banzhaf, John F. III, “One Man, 3.312 Votes: A Mathematical Analysis of the Electoral College”, Villanova Law Review, XIV (Winter 1968), 304–32Google Scholar, and citations there given.

26 Olson (fn. 7), esp. 22–33; Hirschman (fn. 10), esp. appendices B and D.

27 Cyert, Richard M. and March, James G., A Behavioral Theory of the Firm (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall 1963).Google Scholar

28 Murakami, , Logic and Social Choice (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1968)Google Scholar; Fishburn (fn. 7); Farquharson (fn. 7).

29 I depart here from the view of William Mitchell (fn. 12), 106, who contends that “the new political economist … employs economic tools of analysis.” See also Mancur Olson, Jr., “The Relationship Between Economics and the Other Social Science: The Province of a ‘Social Report,‘” in Lipset (fn. 12), chap. 6, esp. pp. 140–42.

30 Kuhn (fn. 1), chap. 4.

31 Two popular anthologies of the period illustrate the point: Natanson, Maurice, ed., Philosophy of the Social Sciences: A Reader (New York: Random House 1963)Google Scholar, and Krimerman, Leonard I., ed., The Nature and Scope of Social Science: A Critical Anthology (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts 1969)Google Scholar. Also widely read were: Margenau, Henry, The Nature of Physical Reality (New York: McGraw-Hill 1950)Google Scholar, and Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation (fn. 18).

32 See especially Popper, Karl R., The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson 1959)Google Scholar, chaps. 3 and 4.

33 Most notably by Hempel, Carl G., “The Logic of Functional Analysis”, in Gross, Llewellyn, ed., Symposium on Sociological Theory (New York: Harper & Row 1959)Google Scholar, chap. 9.

34 The sociologists were among the first to recognize this: see Homans, George Casper, “Contemporary Theory in Sociology”, in Farris, Robert E. L., ed., Handbook of Modern Sociology (Chicago: Rand McNally 1964)Google Scholar, chap. 25, in which Braithwaite, Nagel, and Hempel are invoked to show that “current functional theories are nontheories” (p. 967).

35 E.g., in Barry (fn. 6), 165–68.

36 Harsanyi (fn. 12), 514.

37 See, for example, Barry's strictures (fn. 6), 15–16.

38 See again Eckstein (fn. 3), 24, and Gerschenkron, Alexander, Bread and Democracy in Germany (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1943), 4–6.Google Scholar

39 In particular, political analysts of the earlier period tended to consider American society and politics synonymous with “modern”, “developed”, or “democratic” forms: e.g., Gabriel Almond's lyrical treatment of “Anglo-American” political culture in his seminal “Comparative Political Systems” (fn. 5), esp. 398–400, or Dahl's, Robert A. ode to the “American Hybrid” in A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 1956)Google Scholar, chap. 5.

40 Both groups, of course, were making Downs out to be much more of a Machiavelian than he was; but that is not the point here.

41 Kuhn (fn. 1), esp. chaps. 2, 4, 6, and 8.

42 See, for instance, ibid., 15.

43 Among these have been atomization theory, group theory, structural-functionalism, theories of political culture and political socialization, some theories of the political system, and neo-Marxist theory.

44 Fenno, Richard F. Jr., “The House Appropriations Committee as a Political System: The Problem of Integration”, APSR, Vol. 56 (June 1962), 310–24;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSteiner, Kurt, Politics in Austria (Boston: Little, Brown 1972).Google Scholar

45 Voting studies may by now have become an exception. See, for example, the solidly fact-based exchange among Kramer, Gerald H., “Short-term Fluctuations in U.S. Voting Behavior, 1896–1964”, APSR, Vol. 65 (March 1971), 131–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Tufte, Edward R., “Determinants of the Outcome of Midterm Congressional Election”, APSR, Vol. 69 (September 1975), 812–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Arcelus, Francisco and Meltzer, Allan H., “The Effects of Aggregate Economic Variables on Congressional Elections”, with comments and rejoinders, APSR, Vol. 69 (December 1975), 1232–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 Dowling, R. E., “Pressure Group Theory: Its Methodological Range”, APSR, Vol. 54 (December 1960), 944–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47 The difference between the questions that one would have expected to result from Almond's article on “Comparative Political Systems” (1956) and the ones that were actually asked in The Civic Culture (1961) was already instructive; but, for an extreme case of the subsequent eclecticism, see Rose, Richard, “England: The Traditionally Modern Political Culture”, in Pye, Lucian W. and Verba, Sidney, eds., Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1965)Google Scholar, chap. 3.

48 The criticisms of Schonfeld, William R., “The Focus of Political Socialization Research: An Evaluation”, World Politics, XXIII (April 1971), 544–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar, are particularly cogent.

49 D2 — TC is of course maximized at that value of Q for which assuming that second-order conditions are satisfied. Now which is equivalent to zero when

50 A bureau could of course seek the maximum demand point nonetheless by deliberate underbidding: i.e., asserting to the funding agency that the cost would be lower, and later seeking a deficiency appropriation or supplying less than was promised. Niskanen argues, however, that such breaches of credibility are rather sternly punished by most funding agencies and that bureaucrats have many incentives to remain honest in this respect (p. 42).

51 Cited in Niskanen, 71.

52 Niskanen's ideology blinds him here to a point that one would think congenial to a conservative, namely an explanation of what for convenience may be called the “Rockefeller effect” on state and local spending. Niskanen shows, in an elegant theoretical chapter (chap. 12), that a bureaucrat who expects to be in office only briefly is likely to push immediate costs even higher. Surely it would follow that, where governorships and mayoralties serve as springboards toward national office, state and local spending would tend to rise. But perhaps this is a point on which a former adviser to Governor Reagan is not inclined to dwell.

53 Each newly elected parliament constitutes a new “situation”; in addition, each substantial shift of seats or of partisan affiliations within an existing parliament—e.g., the successive splits of the Gaullist RPF in the Second Assembly of the Fourth Republic—is taken to create a new “situation.” See, for example, de Swaan, 187–89.

54 The countries are: the German Weimar Republic, the French Fourth Republic, postwar Italy, the Netherlands, Israel, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. Periods in which the given country or regime did not exist or was under foreign occupation are, of course, excluded.

55 The earlier work of Eric, C.Browne—"Testing Theories of Coalition Formation in the European Context,” Comparative Political Studies, III (January 1971), 391–412Google Scholar, and Coalition Theories, Sage Professional Papers in Comparative Politics, 01–043 (Beverly Hills and London: Sage Publications 1973)Google Scholar—is somewhat vitiated by de Swaan's criticisms: see de Swaan, 157–59.

56 De Swaan, 148–49; the reciprocal of .997 is approximately 1.003.

57 Axelrod's hypothesis asserts, in essence, that only those coalitions will form which: (a) are winning (i.e., have a majority); (b) are connected, or closed, in the sense of consisting only of parties adjacent to one another on the ideological spectrum, with no “leaps” or “gaps”; and (c) are minimal, in the sense of including no unnecessary parties at either their left or their right extremes. Axelrod (fn. 7), chap. 8.

58 Ibid., 171, 177–79.

59 A perhaps extreme case is the Lyng government in Norway, which held office for four weeks in 1963. It is weighted equally with the Gerhardsen government, which held power for all of the rest of that parliament's four-year term (1961–1965). See de Swaan, 281.

60 A pre-publication review, quoted in the dust-jacket blurb.

61 Masters, Nicolas A., “Committee Assignments in the House of Representatives,” APSR, Vol. 55 (June 1961), 345–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 351–54.

62 Beer, Samuel H., British Politics in the Collectivist Age (New York: Vintage Books 1969), 256–63Google Scholar; Williams, Philip M., Crisis and Compromise: Politics in the Fourth Republic (London: Longman 1972), 411–12.Google Scholar

63 The crucial British legislation was the Corrupt Practices Act of 1883, which sharply curtailed expenditures by individual candidates but left unregulated those by national party organizations; see, for example, Hanham, H. J., Elections and Party Management: Politics in the Time of Disraeli and Gladstone (London: Longmans, Green 1959)Google Scholar, esp. chaps. 12 and 17. In the United States, the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 greatly expanded the resources of the individual representative; see Huntington, Samuel P., “Congressional Responses to the Twentieth Century,” in Truman, David B., ed., The Congress and America's Future (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall 1965), 5–31, at 20–21.Google Scholar

64 Sharply curtailing individual candidates' expenditures (on the British model), while permitting or even subsidizing the involvement of central party organizations in primary elections, would pretty clearly give the parties the whip hand in the selection of candidates.

65 To say that of course politicians would never act against their own interest in this way is too easy: they have so acted, for example in Britain in 1883; and we may be supposing their self-interest to be narrower than it is.

66 As opposed to ones elected from national lists, as in Israel or, in effect if not quite in practice, in Weimar Germany.

67 Williams (fn. 62), 324–36, 396.

68 See, among others: Frauendienst, Werner, “Der Reichstag im Zeitalter des personlichen Regiments Wilhelms II. 1890–1914,” in Deuerlein, Ernst, ed., Der Reichstag (Bonn: Athenaum Verlag 1963), 59–73Google Scholar, at 69–73; Bermbach, Udo, Vorformen parlamentarischer Kabinettsbildung in Deutschland: Der Interjra\tionelle Ausschuss 1971/18 und die Parlamentarisierung der Reichsregierung (Cologne and Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag 1967).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

89 Security in office is, of course, not adequately measured by the partisan competitiveness of districts, or even by the numbers of successful primary challenges. We must ask, rather, how frequent and how geographically widespread both bipartisan competition and serious challenges for the nomination—in which, say, the challenger gains as much as two-thirds of the vote obtained by the incumbent, or 40 percent in a twoway race—have been at various times. I know of no good longitudinal figures on this, but I doubt that many representatives today can feel as secure as some of the Southern Congressional monoliths once did.

70 The fallacy is nicely elucidated in Davis (fn. 23), 55–57.

71 Axelrod's “minimum-connected winning” hypothesis, which achieves the best empirical results in de Swaan's canvass, has no clear deductive derivation.

72 Cf. Hirschman's discussion of evidence bearing on Downs's hypothesis of ideological convergence in two-party systems: (fn. 10), chap. 6.

73 See, most notably, Riker, William H. and Ordeshook, Peter C., “A Theory of the Calculus of Voting,” APSR, Vol. 62 (March 1968), 25–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the criticisms of it in Barry (fn. 6), 15–18; and Ferejohn, John A. and Fiorina, Morris P., “The Paradox of Not Voting: A Decision-Theoretic Analysis,” APSR, Vol. 68 (June 1974), 525–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the demolition of that piece by Stephens, Stephen V., “The Paradox of Not Voting: Comment,” APSR, Vol. 69 (September 1975), 914–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

74 Davis (fn. 23), 127–33.

75 It is more difficult to test, but in principle probably more testable. An adequate test of many of the central hypotheses of Buchanan and Tullock's Calculus of Consent or Rawls's Theory of Justice, for example, would demand evidence that we do not now have and that would be costly to acquire; if acquired, however, it would be conclusive.