Rationality and Rational Choice in Political Science

RATIONALITY AND RATIONAL CHOICE

The rationality concept has figured prominently in some of the most fascinating, heartfelt, and at times acrimonious scholarly exchanges among political scientists. This chapter focuses on five important intellectual developments in the study of rationality from a political science perspective: one, the nineteen sixties as an important era in scholarly exploration of the relationship between public policy making, decision making, and rationality; two, Herbert Simon's seminal and hugely influential theorizing on decision making and the limits of individual rationality; three, the legacy of bounded rationality, particularly in Graham Allison's models of decision making; four, the seminal work of a group of economists and political scientists during the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties who figured prominently in the emergence of modern rational choice theory; and five, the modern scholarly debate over rational choice. A central theme of this survey is the tension between economic and political definitions of rationality and how these conceptions of rationality have shaped contemporary political science theory and research.

Policy Making, Decision Making, and Rationality

Charles Lindblom's "The Science of 'Muddling Through'" was an important milestone for a whole generation of theory and research on public policy making. Although an economist by training, Lindblom became a major figure in political science, particularly among scholars of public administration and public policy. While exploring the intersection of public policy making and administrative decision making, Lindblom compares two "methods" of policy analysis and choice, identified as "rational-comprehensive" and "successive limited comparisons." The first method is summarized as the "root" method and the latter, the "branch" method. Lindblom presents the rational-comprehensive method (or model) in a negative light, as not only empirically flawed social science but as normatively questionable as a guide for sound decision making and public policy making in a democracy.

The rational-comprehensive model assumes that policies are crafted through a process that involves advance specification of key values and goals, tightly configured means-ends analysis, extensive analysis that is at once comprehensive and characterized by high levels of information, and a prominent role for theory-driven analysis. Out of this analytically intensive and information-rich process emerges a policy choice that is the "best" relative to decisional elements such as values and goals, actual analysis, and means evaluation. The successive limited comparisons model, however, is the one embraced by Lindblom. With this model, also known as incrementalism, values and goals often are not distinct, analysis of relations between ends and means is limited and perhaps even inappropriate, the options considered are few in number and differ only marginally (or incrementally) from each other, and policy choices emerge out of a "succession of comparisons" among a limited set of options. If theory is important in the rational-comprehensive method, decision making in incrementalism is process oriented, with goodness of a decision defined as achieving agreement among analysts-that is, agreement rather than some objective evidence that the information, data, and analysis clearly point to the best option.

Lindblom's framework represents a broadside against application of the rational model to policy making and administrative decision making. This comprehensively and tightly specified version of rationality does not work as either description or explanation of public policy making. However, to Lindblom this does not mean that policy making lacks rationality or is characterized by irrationality. It comes down to how rationality is conceptualized. Lindblom does not portray a chaotic or random universe with irrationality run rampant; there is a science or logic to "muddling through." Decisions are made through a politicized process rather than based on compelling, objective logic of the facts, evidence, and information collected. In fact, to Lindblom the rationality of incrementalist-style policy making is preferable. Incrementalist-style rationality is very compatible with a pluralistic political system, particularly in producing options that rank high on political relevance and are grounded firmly in existing knowledge and information held by government officials.

Lindblom set the stage for further examination of rationality during the pivotal nineteen sixties period of political science scholarship. Paul Diesing argued that rationality has multiple meanings and lamented the tendency to view rationality primarily as either technical or economic rationality concerned with organizational productivity and economic efficiency. Diesing develops a philosophy-oriented framework that argues for the study of three other forms of rationality-social, legal, and political. Aaron Wildavsky, one of the twentieth century's most influential political scientists, takes the cue and warns strongly against framing rationality in terms of decision-making strategies or techniques such as cost-benefit analysis, systems analysis, and program budgeting. For political science, the latter were flawed because they indicated an economics-oriented view of rationality. To Wildavsky, political rationality is important in its own right because government leaders must calculate political costs such as the resources needed to generate support for a policy, the implications of a policy decision for reelection, and the possibility of provoking hostility for decisions not well received.