Abstract
After a virtual neglect for several decades, in the last twenty years renewed interest has been shown in a general theory of social behavior. Most of this theoretical work has depended on two main postulates. One is the functionalist (sometimes called structural-functional) approach to the explanation of social institutions, based on the assumption that the social institutions of a given society can best be understood in terms of their social functions, that is, in terms of the contributions they make to the maintenance of social systems as a whole. For lack of an established technical term, we shall call the other postulate the conformist approach to the explanation of individual behavior, it is based on the assumption that uniformities of individual behavior in a given society can best be understood in terms of certain commonly accepted social values, which most members of the society tend to internalize during their socialization process.
World Politics, 21 (1969), 513–538. The author wishes to express his gratitude to the National Science Foundation, which has supported this research by grant GS-722, administered through the University of California Center for Research in Management Science. This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Chicago, September, 1967. The author wishes to express his thanks for the comments received.
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Notes
Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (Glencoe, Ill. 1949);
Talcott Parsons, The Social System (Glencoe, Ill. 1951);
Talcott Parsons, Essays in Sociological Theory (Glencoe, Ill. 1954);
Talcott Parsons, Structure and Process in Modern Societies (Glencoe, Ill. 1961).
See Gabriel Almond, ‘Comparative Political Systems’, Journal of Politics, XVIII, (Aug. 1956), 391–409;
Marion J. Levy Jr., The Structure of Society (Princeton 1952);
R. K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (New York 1957);
William C. Mitchell, The American Polity (New York 1962) and
William C. Mitchell, Sociological Analysis and Politics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1967);
A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society (Glencoe, Ill. 1952), etc.
See, e.g., James S. Coleman, ‘Comment on ‘On the Concept of Influence,’’ The Public Opinion Quarterly, XXVII (Spring 1963), 63–92;
Ralf Dahrendorf, ‘Out of Utopia: Toward a Reorientation of Sociological Analysis’, American Journal of Sociology, LXIV (September 1958), 115–27;
Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (Stanford 1959);
Alvin Gouldner, ‘Some Observations on Systematic Theory, 1945–55’, in Hans L. Zetterberg, ed., Sociology in the United States (Paris, 1956);
Alvin Gouldner, ‘Reciprocity and Autonomy in Functional Theory’, in Llewellyn Gross, ed., Symposium on Sociological Theory (New York 1959);
John C. Harsanyi, ‘Explanation and Comparative Dynamics in Social Science’, Behavioral Science, V (April 1960), 136–45,
John C. Harsanyi, ‘A Bargaining Model for Social Status in Informal Groups and Formal Organizations’, Behavioral Science XI (September 1966), 357–69,
John C. Harsanyi, ‘Individualistic versus Functionalistic Explanations in the Light of Game Theory’, in I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave, eds., Problems in the Philosophy of Science (Amsterdam 1967);
Carl G. Hempel, ‘The Logic of Functional Analysis’, in Llewellyn Gross, ed., Symposium on Sociological Theory (New York 1959);
George C. Homans, ‘Contemporary Theory in Sociology’, in Robert E. L. Faris, ed., Handbook of Modern Sociology (Chicago 1964);
David Lockwood, ‘Some Remarks on ‘The Social System’,’ British Journal of Sociology VII (June 1956), 134–46;
John Rex, Key Problems of Sociological Theory (London 1961).
Ibid.
Dahrendorf, 127, has argued that we cannot use the same theoretical model to analyze social conflicts and to analyze social consensus or cooperation. In actual fact, as modern game theory has shown in analyzing games with mixed interests (where the players’ interests are similar in some respects and are dissimilar in other respects), the same theoretical model can handle both conflict and cooperation without any difficulty.
The von Neumann-Morgenstern approach to game theory does not yield determinate predictions for two-person non-zero-sum games and for n-person games, the two game classes most important for social science applications. John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (Princeton 1944). But later work has overcome this difficulty.
See, e.g. John C. Harsanyi, ‘Bargaining and Conflict Situations in the Light of a New Approach to Game Theory’, American Economic Review, LV (May 1965), 447–57 and
See, e.g. John C. Harsanyi, ‘A General Theory of Rational Behavior in Game Situations’, Econometrica, XXXIV (July 1966), 613–34.
See e.g., Herbert A. Simon, Administrative Behavior (New York 1957),
See e.g., Herbert A. Simon, Models of Man (New York 1957),
See e.g., Herbert A. Simon, ‘The Executive as Decision Maker’, in H. A. Simon, The Shape of Automation (New York 1965),
See e.g., Herbert A. Simon, ‘Political Research: The Decision-Making Framework’, in David Eas-ton, ed., Varieties of Political Theory (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1966).
In fairness to traditional ‘interest theories’, before the emergence of modern game theory the analytical tools needed for answering some of these questions were simply not available.
For example, Duncan Black, The Theory of Committees and Elections (Cambridge 1958);
James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent (Ann Arbor 1962);
James S. Coleman, ‘Collective Decisions’, Sociological Inquiry, XXXIV (Spring 1964), 166–81;
John C. Harsanyi, ‘Measurement of Social Power, Opportunity Costs, and the Theory of Two-Person Bargaining Games’, Behavioral Science, VII (January 1962), 67–80,
John C. Harsanyi, ‘Measurement of Social Power in n-Person Reciprocal Power Situations’, Behavioral Science, VII (January 1962), 81–91,
John C. Harsanyi, ‘Models for the Analysis of the Balance of Power in Society’, in the Proceedings of the 1960 International Congress for Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science (Stanford 1962), 442–62;
Morton Kaplan, System and Process in International Politics (New York 1957);
Mancur Olson Jr., The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, Mass. 1965);
William H. Riker, The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven, Conn. 1962), etc. See also
Robert A. Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago 1956);
George C. Homans, Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms (New York 1961); and
J. W. Thibaut and H.H. Kelley, The Social Psychology of Groups (New York 1959). The last three books make no explicit use of formal rational-choice models, but most of their analysis could be easily restated in these terms.
Modern economic theory (often called neoclassical economic theory in contrast to the classical theory) has considerably relaxed this assumption. Though economic self-interest is still regarded as the dominant motive of economic behavior, it is no longer assumed to be the only important motive.
Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York 1957).
If the number of adjustable parameters of a given theory is as large as (or is even larger than) the number of independent observations available to us, then the fact that the theory is consistent with these observations does not provide a real confirmation for it, because such a theory can always be made consistent with our observations if we choose appropriate numerical values for its parameters. Even if the number of adjustable parameters of the theory is smaller than the number of independent observations, but is only just a little smaller, we cannot ascribe much significance to an agreement between our observations and the theory, because this agreement can easily be a matter of chance. Only if the number of adjustable parameters is much smaller than the number of our observations does an agreement between these observations and our theory represent a true confirmation for the latter, and only in this case can we say that our theory provides an explanation for the observed facts.
See John C. Harsanyi, ‘Cardinal Utility in Welfare Economics and in the Theory of Risk-Taking’, Journal of Political Economy, LXI (October 1953), 434–35;
See John C. Harsanyi, ‘Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility’, Journal of Political Economy, LXIII (August 1955), 309–21;
See John C. Harsanyi, ‘Ethics in Terms of Hypothetical Imperatives’, Mind, XLVII (July 1958), 305–16.
See Harsanyi, ‘A Bargaining Model for Social Status’.
Harsanyi, ‘Explanation and Comparative Dynamics’, 136–37.
I owe this point to Nelson Polsby.
By explaining the ‘existence’ of an institution I mean explaining its emergence at some point of time and its survival ever since.
See Section VIII; cf. also Harsanyi, ‘Explanation and Comparative Dynamics’.
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Harsanyi, J.C. (1980). Rational-Choice Models of Political Behavior vs. Functionalist and Conformist Theories. In: Essays on Ethics, Social Behavior, and Scientific Explanation. Theory and Decision Library, vol 12. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9327-9_7
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