Bounded Rationality and Politics
Bounded Rationality and Politics

Author: Jonathan Bendor

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2010-06-02

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0520945514

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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.

The Limits of Rationality
The Limits of Rationality

Author: Karen Schweers Cook

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2008-10-03

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 0226742415

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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.

Beyond Rationality
Beyond Rationality

Author: Alex Mintz

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-12-02

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1316516350

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

Karl Popper's Philosophy of Science
Karl Popper's Philosophy of Science

Author: Stefano Gattei

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2008-10-16

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13: 1134182953

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Rectifying misrepresentations of Popperian thought with a historical approach to Popper’s philosophy, Gattei reconstructs the logic of Popper’s development to show how one problem and its tentative solution led to a new problem.

Rationality and Power
Rationality and Power

Author: Bent Flyvbjerg

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1998-02-28

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9780226254494

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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.

Toward a Rational Society
Toward a Rational Society

Author: Juergen Habermas

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 1971-08-01

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 9780807041772

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Knowledge, communication, action – These are the concepts central to all of Habermas's thought. As a philosopher, he is concerned with the rational connections of these concepts. As a sociologist, he is prepared to analyze with care the distortions of human interactions caused by existing social and political institutions. In a series of connected essays, the author assesses the function of the contemporary university, and sharply analyzes contemporary students and their political efforts. He then brilliantly analyzes as a communications model the relationships between research institutes and the political agencies which employ them. The book concludes with a complex discussion of technology and science as an "ideology," dedicated to Herbert Marcuse. Critical parts of Marcuse's thought, Habermas dissects contemporary democratic dialogue and offers an important preliminary sketch of a general theory of social evolution. He analyzes the difference between the technological sphere of control and the practical sphere of communication and interaction as the basic feature of human social life, and explains how and why the predominance of the technological sphere is the distinguishing and alienating characteristic of advanced industrial society. The concepts of depoliticization and the freeing of communication emerge as the crux of today's political situation.

Rational Theory of International Politics
Rational Theory of International Politics

Author: Charles L. Glaser

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2010-04-26

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1400835135

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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.

Rationality in Politics and its Limits
Rationality in Politics and its Limits

Author: Terry Nardin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-10-02

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 1317376412

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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 Rationality of Science
The Rationality of Science

Author: W.H. Newton-Smith

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-02-07

Total Pages: 471

ISBN-13: 1134930968

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A clear, original and systematic introduction to philosophy of science which examines the theories of Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn and Feyerabend before proposing a new, temperate rationalist perspective.

Reason and Rationality
Reason and Rationality

Author: Jon Elster

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 92

ISBN-13: 9780691139005

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One of the world's most important political philosophers, Jon Elster is a leading thinker on reason and rationality and their roles in politics and public life. In this short book, he crystallizes and advances his work, bridging the gap between philosophers who use the idea of reason to assess human behavior from a normative point of view and social scientists who use the idea of rationality to explain behavior. In place of these approaches, Elster proposes a unified conceptual framework for the study of behavior. Drawing on classical moralists as well as modern scholarship, and using a wealth of historical and contemporary illustrations, Reason and Rationality marks a new development in Elster's thinking while at the same time providing a brief, elegant, and accessible introduction to his work.