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Can the Rational Choice Framework Cope with Culture?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Ian Shapiro
Ian Shapiro*
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

Editor's Note: This essay is drawn from a 1997 APSA Annual Meeting roundtable entitled “Can the Rational Choice Framework Cope with Culture?” It was presented by the Comparative Politics Division, chaired by Nancy Bermeo of Princeton University, and included, in addition to Ian Shapiro, Robert H. Bates of Harvard University, Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michigan, and Ian Lustick of the University of Pennsylvania.

I do not believe it is fruitful to try to answer the question, “Can the rational choice framework cope with culture?” Asking it implies that the rational choice approach founders due to its inattention to cultural variables, and (depending on how dire one takes the diagnosis to be), that this defect would be remedied if the rational choice framework was replaced, modified, or supplemented by what might be thought of as a “culturalist” one. Consider each of these prescriptions.

Type
Research Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 31 , Issue 1: 30th Anniversary Issue , March 1998 , pp. 40 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1998

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