Rational Choice Theory as Formalized Common Sense

Few methodological issues are more stubborn than the status of rational choice theory (henceforth, RCT): the debates surrounding it are approximately five decades old with no end in sight. Fifty years are a long time not only in the life of any human being but also in the progress of a discipline so it is remarkable that the discussion is not closer to a conclusion now than what it was at its inception. Perhaps it is time for those of us who believe in RCT to accept that, for all our efforts, we may never be able to convince our critics and that RCT may never attain the predominance in social sciences we would have hoped for. The more time passes, the more likely it is that RCT will be swept aside by some newer paradigm without ever having attained the status of an orthodoxy. In the scheme of scientific progress, RCT may some day be perceived as a stillborn doctrine. Whatever the future holds in store for it, I believe that RCT deserves to be defended although for reasons that other RCT scholars may disagree with. In this paper I will concede many points raised by RCT’s critics but I will also claim that, with some reinterpretations, both methodological and substantive, RCT can, in cooperation with other paradigms, clarify several important phenomena and, in the process, deflate some pseudo-problems. Among the many criticisms levelled agains RCT, I want to take issue with a few. RCT is flawed, critics argue, because it: