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The appeal of rational choice theory (RCT) has been well explained by
James Coleman (1986): rational choice theory has a unique attractiveness as a basis for theory because it is such a complete conception of
action that we need ask no more questions about it. Hollis (1977) has
expressed the same idea in other words: rational action is its own explanation (quoted by Goldthorpe 1996). It is true that, once we have explained
that subject X has done Y rather than Y because Y was more advantageous, we need to know nothing more. Even if biology was able to describe
adequately the chemical or electrical processes going on in the brain when
a subject makes a decision, this would add nothing to the explanation as
to why the subject did Y. It would merely describe the same process in
a different language. But the biological explanation would be unable to
confirm or disconfirm the rational explanation. This final aspect of rational explanations, the fact that these explanations are without black box
frustrations, is probably, as suggested by Coleman, the main source of
RCTs attractiveness.
IS RCT GENERAL?
Two questions should be raised before we give RCT the status of a general
theory. Being attractive does not necessarily imply that a theory is acceptable, valid, or true in all circumstances. That rational action is its own
explanation is one thing. Whether action can always be considered rational in the very special sense RCT gives to the notion of rationality is
another. If all actions and, further, all social phenomena could be validly
explained by RCT, this would be fine. But can they? In the same way, it
would be just fine if I had lost my key bundle under the streetlight where
I may search more effectively than in the surrounding darkness. But a
preference for looking in an illuminated area does not mean that I will
1
Address correspondence to Raymond Boudon, CNRS, 54 Boulevard Raspail, 75270
Paris, Cedex 06, France.
817
2
The answer is given by Bergeron (1999) who, rather than RCT, uses the theory of
rationality I advocate here.
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Symposium: Boudon
is whether or not theories incorporating this postulate reproduce correctly
the observed data.
Assumptions of type 1 can be acceptable in some cases. Thus, I can
believe that social inequalities are unfair because such a belief makes my
poverty undeserved and thus more acceptable to me; alternatively, I believe that social inequalities are fair because I would then perceive my
opulence as well deserved. It is hard, though, to accept the view that all
beliefs are generated by their psychological or social function. This objection was explicitly raised by Weber ([1920] 1986, p. 241) against Nietzsche
and Marx: ressentiment theory applies exclusively to particular cases.
In the general case, psychological or social interests may draw my attention to a theory and eventually create in my mind a positive or negative
disposition toward the theory in question. But interests alone are generally
unable to explain conviction.
Assumption of type 2 rests upon a very debatable epistemology. Why
such a view as Friedmans positivism was developed can be understood:
it derives from the reluctance of the positivistic tradition toward taking
into account subjective factors. But such an epistemology is ungrounded:
I can check whether this man whom I see cutting wood in his yard wants
his room to get warmer. If he puts the piece of wood in his chimney, my
interpretation of his behavior will be confirmed. If the weather is hot or
if he starts carving the piece of wood, my interpretation will be falsified.
Even if I cannot perceive directly his reasons, I can reconstruct them.
This reconstruction has the status of a theory that can be confronted with
data. That the reasons motivating people are not directly observable does
not imply that their reconstruction is doomed to be arbitrary. Now, Kiser
and Hecter reject both Friedmanian positivism and also the view that
determining the reasons explaining actions would be an empirical question. Instead, they see self-interest as the ultimate real cause of any action.
But this raises a difficult question. The rational choice theorist who encounters a voter who tells him that he votes because he considers voting
to be a civic duty will reject the interpretation of the subject himself and,
by application of his own RCT, assume that voting maximizes for the
voter some costs-benefits balance. At this point, the rational choice theorist should explain the false consciousness he attributes to the actor: Why
does the subject think he votes for one reason while he really votes for
another? But how does the rational choice theorist know that the consciousness of his voter is false? I am not saying here that what the actor
himself thinks and says of his own motivation is the ultimate truth. It is
rather one piece of information among others. What I am saying is (1)
that actors statements about his motivation are facts that, as any fact,
should be taken into consideration and explained, (2) that the Nietzschean,
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Symposium: Boudon
such fashion because a bias or a frame affects their perception, the next
question is, namely, Where do these biases come from? As RCT has no
answer to this question, the explanation is no more final; it generates, on
the contrary, large black boxes.
The two categories of objections merge into a general objection. Some
actions are purely instrumental. Among the purely instrumental actions,
some are egoistic. Some actions are not purely instrumental in the sense
that they include a cognitive dimension: the actor wants to reach a goal,
G; he has the impression that M is a good way of reaching G, but the
relation between M and G is not trivial. In that case, the noninstrumental
cognitive dimension of action is the focus of the analysis. Some actions
are not instrumental at all, as when an actor does X not because he wants
to generate some outcome, but because X is a consequence of the principles he endorses. In that case, the main point in the analysis is to explain
why the actor endorses the principles. Endorsing principles, endorsing a
theory or a viewpoint is also an action, but of the noninstrumental type.
This diversity cannot be forgotten or reduced except by two controversial
strategies: considering the noninstrumental aspects of actions as uninteresting and being content with saying that the actors are subject to biases,
frames, and so forth; or assuming that all actions would be at a deeper
level of a unique type: not only instrumental, but egoistic. I agree with
Somers that such an assumption has a metaphysical flavor.
ALTERNATIVE WAY
Example 1
Using implicitly methodological individualism and RCT.At one point
in his Old Regime Tocqueville ([1856] 1955) wonders why, at the end of
the 18th century, French agriculture remains stagnant at a time when
agriculture is flourishing in England. This is particularly puzzling since
the physiocrats, who develop the view that modernizing agriculture is the
main path to growth, are politically very influential in France at the time.
Tocquevilles explanation: administrative centralization is the cause of
the fact that positions of civil servants are more numerous and hence
more easily available in France than in England. Also, the French centralization makes serving the king in France a unique source of prestige, influence, and power; consequently, other things equal, landlords are more
easily incited in France than in England to leave their lands and buy a
royal position. In England by contrast, being an innovative landowner
not only produces local respect and prestige, it may also open the way to
Westminster. This macroscopic difference between England and France,
summarized by Tocqueville by his notion of administrative centralization, explains why landlord absenteeism is much larger in France than
in England. Further, landlord absenteeism is the cause of a low rate of
innovation: since their interests are at the court, the landlords themselves
have little motivation to innovate; as to the farmers who run the landownerships, they would have a motivation to innovate, but hardly the capacity
of doing so. Finally, the low rate of innovation is responsible for the stagnation of agricultural development in France.
In this discussion, Tocqueville uses methodological individualism
(MI). The macroscopic difference between France and England is explained as the effect of individual decisions taken by the landlords. The
individual decisions are analyzed as taken, not by angels, but by men
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Symposium: Boudon
belonging to social contexts. The parameters characterizing the French
and British contexts are themselves the products of a long history. This
point gives me the opportunity of stressing that MI does not imply solipsism as soon as individual decisions are analyzed, as here by Tocqueville,
as affected by the parameters characterizing the context.3 Finally, Tocqueville uses here what we call RCT: by leaving their land and serving the
king, the landlords gain in influence, prestige, and so on. In England by
contrast, it is a better strategy to appear locally as a modern and efficient
landlord. The macroscopic statement centralization is a cause of agricultural underdevelopment appears as entirely acceptable, because it is supported by this individualistic analysis. Though centralization is a complex factor, it is identified with precise parameters that affect the
situation of decision making of the actors, here the landlords. Centralization is a construct. But it is not a mere word. In summary, Tocqueville
uses MI and, moreover, he uses the basic behavioral axiomatics of RCT;
the individuals are analyzed as selfish, goal-oriented, and maximizers. It
can be noted incidentally that Tocquevilles path has been literally followed by Root (1994) in his illuminating book on the comparative development of the modern state in Britain and France.
Example 2
Using implicitly MI, but rejecting RCT.In other circumstances,
Tocqueville uses MI but not RCT. Thus, he wonders, again in his Old
Regime, why the cult of Reason became immensely popular in France at
the end of the 18th century, but not in England. His answer is that traditional institutions, and hence Tradition with a capital T, were totally
disqualified in France but not in England. Thus, the British aristocracy
fulfilled important social and economic roles. Consequently, its higher status was considered by people as grounded and legitimate. In France, by
contrast, the gentry had no visible social and economic function except
sitting in Versailles. Those members of the gentry who were not able to
buy a royal position remained on their land. Poor and bitter, they stuck
ritualistically to their privileges. Their officially higher rank was perceived
by the peasants as illegitimate. As it was the product of tradition, the
peasants came to the idea that institutions deriving their strength from
tradition were bad. So, when the philosophes proposed to substitute for
institutions grounded on Tradition, a society grounded on what they presented as the opposite term, namely Reason with a capital R, they had
3
Bunge (1996) stresses rightly that MI (especially as I have applied it; see Boudon
1974) has nothing to do with atomism or solipsism and is perfectly compatible with
his systemism.
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Cognitive rationality should be distinguished from instrumental rationality. First, because endorsing a theory is a noninstrumental action. Second,
because the question the actor is confronted with here is not to maximize
any cost-benefit balance, but to check whether, to the best of his knowledge, an idea is acceptable. Radnitzki (1987) has tried to reduce this cognitive rationality to RCT. When more and more facts appeared easily explainable by the theory that the earth was spherical, it became more and
more difficult to develop alternative arguments supporting the theory that
the earth was flat. Radnitzki proposes to substitute costly for difficult
and makes then the point that the choice between alternative scientific
theories can also be analyzed in RCT terms. But the main point is that
the arguments supporting the theory that the earth is spherical appeared,
after a while, much stronger than the arguments supporting the alternative theories. Therefore, little is gained by substituting costly for diffi824
Symposium: Boudon
cult. Cost is namely a consequence of difficulty. So, what needs to be
explained is why a set of arguments appears as defensible or not.
AXIOLOGICAL RATIONALITY
Finally, we come to the idea that Tocqueville and Weber among others
have sketched a model, which I have proposed to call the cognitivist
model (CM), resting on the following postulates (see Boudon 1994, 1996a,
1997b, 1998).
1. Until the proof to the contrary is given, social actors should be considered as rational in the sense that they have strong reasons of believing
what they believe, of doing what they do, and so forth.
2. In particular cases, these reasons can be realistically treated as deal825
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Symposium: Boudon
Why are magical beliefs more likely to found in some societies than in
others? (See Boudon 1994.) Why was methadone used much earlier in
Holland than in France? (See Bergeron 1999.) All of these questions have
been convincingly answered in works that use MI and an open theory of
rationality rather than the special figure of rationality used by RCT. In
particular it can be noted that, in his Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith,
RCTs spiritual father, solves the above question about miners and soldiers using what I call the CM rather than RCT (Boudon 1996a, 1998).
The second remark, which I cannot develop, is that CM excluded radically solipsism: I cannot perceive as strong the reasons leading me to endorse a statement X is good, legitimate, right, true, and so forth without
conceiving these reasons as grounded and hence as intersubjectively valid
(Boudon 1995).
Finally, a crucial question is raised by Somers: What is a good theory?
Sometimes, good scientific theories use mathematical language, are derived from a general theory, and so on. But such attributes are not components of a good theory generally. Otherwise, physical theories would be
good, but biological theories bad, since the latter make little use of mathematics and are hardly deducted from a general theory. Celestial mechanics
is not the model to be followed by all disciplines. A good scientific explanation of a phenomenon P is rather a set {S} of statements meeting three
requirements: (1) that all s {S} are acceptable, (2) that {S} P, (3) that
relevant facts are not arbitrarily ignored. They are satisfied, for instance,
in Tocquevilles above examples: all statements are acceptable (simple
psychological statements, empirical statements congruent with observation, no black box concepts in the components of the statements, etc.);
moreover, {S} P (P stagnation of French agriculture, enthusiasm of
the peasants for the idea of Reason); finally the theory explains not only
the observed behavior but the verbal statements of actors as they have
reached us.
REFERENCES
Allais, M. 1953. Le comportement de lhomme rationnel devant le risque: Critique
des postulats de lecole americaine. Econometrica 21 (4): 50346.
Bergeron, H. 1999. Soigner ou prendre soin des toxicomanes: Anatomie dune croyance
collective. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Boudon, R. 1974. Education, Opportunity and Social Inequality. New York: Wiley.
. (1977) 1982. The Unintended Consequences of Social Action. London: Macmillan.
. 1994. The Art of Self-Persuasion. London: Polity Press.
. 1995. Le juste et le vrai. Paris: Fayard.
. 1996. The Rational Choice Model: A Particular Case of the Cognitive
Model. Rationality and Society 8 (2): 12350.
. 1997a. Le paradoxe du vote et la theorie de la rationalite. Revue Francaise
de Sociologie 38 (2): 21727.
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