Rational Choice Without Apology

This paper on policy theories, by Mathew McCubbins, focuses on debunking the criticisms of Positive Political Theory, which is based on Rational Choice Theory. Many of the criticisms he debunks are related to issues we have discussed in class, including a general criticism of the rationality approach and human behavior theories, spatial models, and criticisms by Green and Shapiro. I will highlight some of McCubbins' main points on these 3 topics. The underlying reason theories such as PPT have been criticized so freely is because they are so "explicit". In other words, they explain so much that it makes it easy for people to attack them. In the past, key theories of political behavior left a lot of their explanation up in the air or not clearly specified, so they were harder to attack. Specifically, PPT most often gets criticized for its assumptions - rationality, component analysis (small parts of the system can be analyzed to understand human behavior), and strategic behavior (people play games).

In class we have talked about "rational ignorance", the idea that people do a cost-benefit analysis on whether or not to acquire more information on candidates in order to vote in proper accordance with their preferences. Much of the time, people find the costs associated with collecting that information to outweigh the benefits. In this paper, the author discusses the criticism that people usually cannot explain why they voted one way or another. I tend to feel that "rational" ignorance is a fairly accurate description of the human behavior in this situation. "Rational choice is reasoned choice" is something the author underlines. McCubbins' states two important things related to this.. That when people do not accept the rationality argument it is mostly because they do not "see people making [these] reasoned choices". But just because we don't see them reasoning does not mean they haven't in the present or that they haven't been conditioned from experiences in the past. His basic conclusion is that people have learned throughout their lives with each experience and they make rational decisions accordingly, even if we can't see it. Finally, decisions don't have to appear reasonable to be rational. McCubbins discusses component analysis, specifically in regards to spatial models (graphic representations of political problems), and debunks criticisms of them. He first lays out some basic assumptions - that policy packages can be laid out in "N-Space" so in graph form and single peaked preferences. While its hard to put specific numbers on graphs for such packages, it is only important that graphs have "relative" significance, as in one policy relative to another, and this can be done. The author notes that such models are criticized for narrowing down "multi dimensional" issue space into a single one. This is OK for two reasons. First, this can still give important insight into the policy process. Secondly, it is justified because many times for example, budgets decisions are made one at a time and thus such one dimensional models work. Finally, such spatial models never claim to fully explain a "dependent variable", they just seek to show the effects of big changes (like Democratic president to Republican president and so forth). Finally, he looked specifically at Green and Shapiro's argument. Their argument - that RCT fails to formulate empirically testable hypotheses, that any testable ones are never scrutinized, that the tests are poorly devised and irrelevant to the models, and that any properly done tests tend to undermine the rational choice theories they are testing - does not properly interpret scientific method or the PPT, according to McCubbins. Their fundamental problem is that they confuse a "PPT Research program" with what is actually "individual PPT projects" and thus assume that the absence of empirical hypothesis testing is a fault when in fact it is just a characteristic of the structure of "individual PPT projects". McCubbins main point is that PPT is usually a series of steps, of individual PPT projects, most of which do not test empirically but when put together reveal a larger and more accurate fundamental theory of politics.