Russian Mafia: The Explanatory Power of Rational Choice Theory
نویسنده
چکیده
Many philosophers, sociologists, and political scientists defend the claim that rational choice theory can provide the basis for a unified and comprehensive theory of social behaviour. Rational choice models are theoretically generalized to explain the behaviour studied by nearly all social science disciplines, from political science to psychology and sociology. Specific applications include government decision-making; individual consumer decisions; social institutions such as the criminal justice system; and social behaviour in general (Zey, 1988:88). I will use the particular phenomenon of the Russian Mafia to test the conceptual and explanatory consequences of rational choice theory.
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