Review Article: ‘Major Combat Operations Have Ended’? Arguing about Rational Choice

Abstract

Arguing about rational choice theory remains a popular pastime. Following the publication of Green and Shapiro’sPathologies of Rational Choice Theory,a backlash against the use of rational choice theory within political science gained momentum. This article shows how, since 1994, sceptics have refined and extended the critique of rational choice and how practitioners have defended their approach, and a more general argument has emerged. In the 1990s, attitudes towards rational choice theory constituted a fundamental fault-line within the discipline, but changes to the way in which rational choice is practised and defended, together with some broader changes in the social sciences, have created more areas of common ground and taken some of the urgency out of this debate.