Rational Politics PDF Download

Author: Steven J. Brams
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 1483258572
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Rational Politics: Decisions, Games, and Strategy focuses on the unified presentation of politics as a rational human activity, including the paradox of voting and proportional representation. The publication first offers information on the study of rational politics, political intrigue in the Bible, and candidate strategies. Topics include the factor of timing in presidential primaries, rational positions in a multicandidate race, primacy of issues and their spatial representation, and politics in the story of Esther. The text then elaborates on voting paradoxes and the problems of representation, voting power, and threats and deterrence. Discussions focus on a sequential view of the Cuban missile crisis, use of threat power in Poland, power anomalies in the European Community Council of Ministers, probability of the paradox of voting, empirical examples of the paradox of voting, and problems in achieving proportional representation. The book is a valuable reference for researchers interested in rational politics.

Author: Terry Nardin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317376412
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
The word ‘rationality’ and its cognates, like ‘reason’, have multiple contexts and connotations. Rational calculation can be contrasted with rational interpretation. There is the rationality of proof and of persuasion, of tradition and of the criticism of tradition. Rationalism (and rationalists) can be reasonable or unreasonable. Reason is sometimes distinguished from revelation, superstition, convention, prejudice, emotion, and chance, but all of these also involve reasoning. In politics, three views of rationality – economic, moral, and historical – have been especially important, often defining approaches to politics and political theory such as utilitarianism and rational choice theory. These approaches privilege positive or natural law, responsibilities, or human rights, and emphasize the importance of culture and tradition, and therefore meaning and context. This book explores the understanding of rationality in politics and the relations between different approaches to rationality. Among the topics considered are the limits of rationality, the role of imagination and emotion in politics, the meaning of political realism, the nature of political judgment, and the relationship between theory and practice. This book was originally published as a special issue of Global Discourse.

Author: Bent Flyvbjerg
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226254494
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
In the Enlightenment tradition, rationality is considered well-defined. However, the author of this study argues that rationality is context-dependent, and that the crucial context is determined by decision-makers' political power. He uses a real-world Danish project to illustrate this theory.

Author: Alex Mintz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009034197
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
How and why do people make political decisions? This book is the first to present a unified framework of the Behavioral Political Science paradigm. – BPS presents a range of psychological approaches to understanding political decision-making. The integration of these approaches with Rational Choice Theory provides students with a comprehensible paradigm for understanding current political events around the world. Presented in nontechnical language and enlivened with a wealth of real-world examples, this is an ideal core text for a one-semester courses in political science, American government, political psychology, or political behavior. It can also supplement a course in international relations or public policy.

Author: Karen Schweers Cook
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226742415
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
Prevailing economic theory presumes that agents act rationally when they make decisions, striving to maximize the efficient use of their resources. Psychology has repeatedly challenged the rational choice paradigm with persuasive evidence that people do not always make the optimal choice. Yet the paradigm has proven so successful a predictor that its use continues to flourish, fueled by debate across the social sciences over why it works so well. Intended to introduce novices to rational choice theory, this accessible, interdisciplinary book collects writings by leading researchers. The Limits of Rationality illuminates the rational choice paradigm of social and political behavior itself, identifies its limitations, clarifies the nature of current controversies, and offers suggestions for improving current models. In the first section of the book, contributors consider the theoretical foundations of rational choice. Models of rational choice play an important role in providing a standard of human action and the bases for constitutional design, but do they also succeed as explanatory models of behavior? Do empirical failures of these explanatory models constitute a telling condemnation of rational choice theory or do they open new avenues of investigation and theorizing? Emphasizing analyses of norms and institutions, the second and third sections of the book investigate areas in which rational choice theory might be extended in order to provide better models. The contributors evaluate the adequacy of analyses based on neoclassical economics, the potential contributions of game theory and cognitive science, and the consequences for the basic framework when unequal bargaining power and hierarchy are introduced.

Author: Jonathan B. Bendor
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520259467
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
"Bendor's Bounded Rationality and Politics provides an adept and illuminating critique of existing theories while also introducing new models and concepts that are sure to remain part of the conversation for generations to come. This book will reinvigorate the field of political science."--Daniel P. Carpenter, Harvard University "Bendor's scholarship is top drawer. Excellent. These essays are not only intellectually deep, but also engaging and powerful."--Scott Page, University of Michigan

Author: Albert Breton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521804417
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Political extremism is widely considered to be the product of irrational behavior. The distinguishing feature of this collection by well-known economists and political scientists from North America, Europe and Australia is to propose a variety of explanations which all insist on the rationality of extremism. Contributors use variants of this approach to shed light on subjects such as the conditions under which democratic parties take extremist positions, the relationship between extremism and conformism, the strategies adopted by revolutionary movements, and the reasons why extremism often leads to violence. The authors identify four core issues in the study of the phenomenon: the nature (definition) of extremism and its origins in both democratic and authoritarian settings, the capacity of democratic political systems to accommodate extremist positions, the strategies (civil disobedience, assassination, lynching) chosen by extremist groups, and the circumstances under which extremism becomes a threat to democracy.

Author: Charles Webel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134490372
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
What are reason and rationality? How significant are recent postmodernist and neuroscientific challenges to these longheld notions? Should we abandon a belief in reason and an adherence to rationality? Or can reason and rationality be reformulated and reframed? And what does politics have to do with how we think about reason and why we act more or less rationally? The Politics of Rationality differs from other books with "reason" or “rationality” due to its historical, political, depth-psychological, and multidisciplinary approach to understanding reason through history. Charles P. Webel eloquently clarifies the links among ideas, their creators, the relevant mental processes, and the political cultures within which such important concepts as reasons and rationality take hold. He demonstrates how reason and rationality/irrationality have become what they mean for us today and proposes a way to rethink reason and rationality in light of the withering critiques leveled against them. In doing so, he presents a "history of reason and rationality" by examining the intellectual and political contexts of four representative theorists of reason and rationality-- Plato, Machiavelli, Kant, and Weber—and by addressing contemporary challenges posed by postmodernism, depth psychology, and neurophilosophy.

Author: S.M. Amadae
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226016544
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
Offering a fascinating biography of a foundational theory, Amadae reveals not only how the ideological battles of the Cold War shaped ideas but also how those ideas may today be undermining the very notion of individual liberty they were created to defend.

Author: Joe Oppenheimer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107014883
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
This book presents the rational choice theories of collective action and social choice, applying them to problems of public policy and social justice. Joe Oppenheimer has crafted a basic survey of, and pedagogic guide to, the findings of public choice theory for political scientists. He describes the problems of collective action, institutional structures, regime change, and political leadership.