Bounded Rationality and Politics

Bounded Rationality and Politics
Author: Jonathan Bendor
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2010-06-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0520945514

In Bounded Rationality and Politics, Jonathan Bendor considers two schools of behavioral economics—the first guided by Tversky and Kahneman’s work on heuristics and biases, which focuses on the mistakes people make in judgment and choice; the second as described by Gerd Gigerenzer’s program on fast and frugal heuristics, which emphasizes the effectiveness of simple rules of thumb. Finding each of these radically incomplete, Bendor’s illuminating analysis proposes Herbert Simon’s pathbreaking work on bounded rationality as a way to reconcile the inconsistencies between the two camps. Bendor shows that Simon’s theory turns on the interplay between the cognitive constraints of decision makers and the complexity of their tasks.

Rationality in Politics and its Limits

Rationality in Politics and its Limits
Author: Terry Nardin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2017-10-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317376412

The word ‘rationality’ and its cognates, like ‘reason’, have multiple contexts and connotations. Rational calculation can be contrasted with rational interpretation. There is the rationality of proof and of persuasion, of tradition and of the criticism of tradition. Rationalism (and rationalists) can be reasonable or unreasonable. Reason is sometimes distinguished from revelation, superstition, convention, prejudice, emotion, and chance, but all of these also involve reasoning. In politics, three views of rationality – economic, moral, and historical – have been especially important, often defining approaches to politics and political theory such as utilitarianism and rational choice theory. These approaches privilege positive or natural law, responsibilities, or human rights, and emphasize the importance of culture and tradition, and therefore meaning and context. This book explores the understanding of rationality in politics and the relations between different approaches to rationality. Among the topics considered are the limits of rationality, the role of imagination and emotion in politics, the meaning of political realism, the nature of political judgment, and the relationship between theory and practice. This book was originally published as a special issue of Global Discourse.

The Limits of Rationality

The Limits of Rationality
Author: Karen Schweers Cook
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2008-10-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0226742415

Prevailing economic theory presumes that agents act rationally when they make decisions, striving to maximize the efficient use of their resources. Psychology has repeatedly challenged the rational choice paradigm with persuasive evidence that people do not always make the optimal choice. Yet the paradigm has proven so successful a predictor that its use continues to flourish, fueled by debate across the social sciences over why it works so well. Intended to introduce novices to rational choice theory, this accessible, interdisciplinary book collects writings by leading researchers. The Limits of Rationality illuminates the rational choice paradigm of social and political behavior itself, identifies its limitations, clarifies the nature of current controversies, and offers suggestions for improving current models. In the first section of the book, contributors consider the theoretical foundations of rational choice. Models of rational choice play an important role in providing a standard of human action and the bases for constitutional design, but do they also succeed as explanatory models of behavior? Do empirical failures of these explanatory models constitute a telling condemnation of rational choice theory or do they open new avenues of investigation and theorizing? Emphasizing analyses of norms and institutions, the second and third sections of the book investigate areas in which rational choice theory might be extended in order to provide better models. The contributors evaluate the adequacy of analyses based on neoclassical economics, the potential contributions of game theory and cognitive science, and the consequences for the basic framework when unequal bargaining power and hierarchy are introduced.

Rational Politics

Rational Politics
Author: Steven J. Brams
Publisher: Academic Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2014-05-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1483258572

Rational Politics: Decisions, Games, and Strategy focuses on the unified presentation of politics as a rational human activity, including the paradox of voting and proportional representation. The publication first offers information on the study of rational politics, political intrigue in the Bible, and candidate strategies. Topics include the factor of timing in presidential primaries, rational positions in a multicandidate race, primacy of issues and their spatial representation, and politics in the story of Esther. The text then elaborates on voting paradoxes and the problems of representation, voting power, and threats and deterrence. Discussions focus on a sequential view of the Cuban missile crisis, use of threat power in Poland, power anomalies in the European Community Council of Ministers, probability of the paradox of voting, empirical examples of the paradox of voting, and problems in achieving proportional representation. The book is a valuable reference for researchers interested in rational politics.

Rationality and Power

Rationality and Power
Author: Bent Flyvbjerg
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 1998-02-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780226254494

In the Enlightenment tradition, rationality is considered well-defined. However, the author of this study argues that rationality is context-dependent, and that the crucial context is determined by decision-makers' political power. He uses a real-world Danish project to illustrate this theory.

Rational Theory of International Politics

Rational Theory of International Politics
Author: Charles L. Glaser
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2010-04-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1400835135

Within the realist school of international relations, a prevailing view holds that the anarchic structure of the international system invariably forces the great powers to seek security at one another's expense, dooming even peaceful nations to an unrelenting struggle for power and dominance. Rational Theory of International Politics offers a more nuanced alternative to this view, one that provides answers to the most fundamental and pressing questions of international relations. Why do states sometimes compete and wage war while at other times they cooperate and pursue peace? Does competition reflect pressures generated by the anarchic international system or rather states' own expansionist goals? Are the United States and China on a collision course to war, or is continued coexistence possible? Is peace in the Middle East even feasible? Charles Glaser puts forward a major new theory of international politics that identifies three kinds of variables that influence a state's strategy: the state's motives, specifically whether it is motivated by security concerns or "greed"; material variables, which determine its military capabilities; and information variables, most importantly what the state knows about its adversary's motives. Rational Theory of International Politics demonstrates that variation in motives can be key to the choice of strategy; that the international environment sometimes favors cooperation over competition; and that information variables can be as important as material variables in determining the strategy a state should choose.

Beyond Rationality

Beyond Rationality
Author: Alex Mintz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2021-12-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1316516350

The first textbook to present a framework of the Behavioral Political Science paradigm for understanding political decision-making.

Politics and the Architecture of Choice

Politics and the Architecture of Choice
Author: Bryan D. Jones
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2001-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780226406374

Politics and the Architecture of Choice draws on work in political science, economics, cognitive science, and psychology to offer an innovative theory of how people and organizations adapt to change and why these adaptations don't always work. Our decision-making capabilities, Jones argues, are both rational and adaptive. But because our rationality is bounded and our adaptability limited, our actions are not based simply on objective information from our environments. Instead, we overemphasize some factors and neglect others, and our inherited limitations—such as short-term memory capacity—all act to affect our judgment. Jones shows how we compensate for and replicate these limitations in groups by linking the behavioral foundations of human nature to the operation of large-scale organizations in modern society. Situating his argument within the current debate over the rational choice model of human behavior, Jones argues that we should begin with rationality as a standard and then study the uniquely human ways in which we deviate from it.

Political Extremism and Rationality

Political Extremism and Rationality
Author: Albert Breton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2002-01-07
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780521804417

Political extremism is widely considered to be the product of irrational behavior. The distinguishing feature of this collection by well-known economists and political scientists from North America, Europe and Australia is to propose a variety of explanations which all insist on the rationality of extremism. Contributors use variants of this approach to shed light on subjects such as the conditions under which democratic parties take extremist positions, the relationship between extremism and conformism, the strategies adopted by revolutionary movements, and the reasons why extremism often leads to violence. The authors identify four core issues in the study of the phenomenon: the nature (definition) of extremism and its origins in both democratic and authoritarian settings, the capacity of democratic political systems to accommodate extremist positions, the strategies (civil disobedience, assassination, lynching) chosen by extremist groups, and the circumstances under which extremism becomes a threat to democracy.

Strategic Logic and Political Rationality

Strategic Logic and Political Rationality
Author: Michael I. Handel
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780714654843

One of three volumes in honour of the teaching and scholarship of the late Michael I. Handel, this book details the universal logic of strategy and the ability of liberal-democratic governments to address this logic rationally. Treating war as an extension of politics, the diverse contributors (drawn from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Israel) explore the difficulties in matching strategy to policy, especially in free societies.