Rational Choice And Institutional Approaches

We know that democracies are common among the economically urbanized countries and rare between the very deprived ones. The reason we scrutinize this pattern is not that democracies are more probable to emerge, as a result, of economic development but that they are to a large extent more possible to survive if they occur to emerge in most urbanized countries. The paths to democracy are diverse. Indeed, they appear to follow no unsurprising pattern. But once democracy is conventional, for whatever reasons, its endurance depends on a few, easily particular, factors.

When it comes down to it, we all make our own decisions. We weigh the pros and cons to decide if the benefits outweigh the potential punishments. The idea of rational choice theory is that people choose their actions based on the options available and choose the one they most prefer. If their choice is to eat a donut or to not, when they really want to eat it, chances are they will eat it. Once you add in punishment, it gets more complicated. If the person were to be punished for eating it, they will most likely think it through more. Say, it’s a teenager who wants to eat the donut but he knows his father will ground him if he does. This donut is the teen’s favorite kind and he really really wants to eat the donut, but the risk of punishment is there, the teen will weigh the consequences against the benefits. Would he choose a few minutes of a tasty donut and risk being grounded for a week or would he choose to forgo the donut and not get in trouble? The act of having a choice to do something you want to do that also has consequences and causes you to rationally decide if it’s worth it or not is rational choice theory.

Comparative politics is the empirical comparative study of political systems. It involves the classification and comparison of institutions - ‘a rule that has been institutionalised’ (Lane and Ersson, 1999: 23) - in order to determine the nature of political regimes. The study of comparative politics has come to be guided by three major research schools: rational choice theory, culturalist analysis and structuralist approaches; each of which spearhead a distinctive notion over what about institutions affects the nature of the political process. Rationalists are methodological individualists who assert that

The Funnel of Causality model describes voting behaviour in terms of socio-demographics, party identification, issues, and candidates. In this essay I will focus on issues because they can be compared between countries. An issue is essentially a problem that is perceived to be important, and there is an actor with “ownership” of the issue, meaning that there is someone who is thought to be “the best man for the job” so to speak. The economy isn’t an issue because you can’t have “ownership” over the economy. Issues are important because they explain a lot about voting behaviour.

My example of the rational choice theory of today is the mexican drug controls of December 2011. The drug trafficking organization in Mexico was highly rational, self-interested actors seeked to maximize profit.

A voter can be defined as an individual who votes, or has the right to vote, in elections. Voting behaviour is explained using the concepts of expressive voting and strategic voting. A rational voter would act more strategically, that is, the voter would vote to produce an election outcome which is as close as possible to his or her own policy preferences, rather than voting on the basis of party attachment, ideology, or social group membership (expressive voting). Strategic voting has become more important than voting on the basis of political cleavages (expressive voting), so voters have become more rational in their approach, however there is always an element of expressiveness in their behaviour. Political parties were initially formed to represent the interests of particular groups in society however, as these parties became more universal in the appeal of their policy programmes, voting behaviour shifted from expressive to strategic. This essay explores the reasons behind the declining importance of political cleavages, and the rise of strategic voting.

Every country differs in their preference of political system to govern their countries. For democratic countries, two possible choices of governing are the presidential system and the parliamentary system. Since both the presidential and the parliamentary systems have their own strengths and weaknesses, many scholars have examined these two forms of government, and debate on which political system is more successful in governance. In this paper, I will first provide a detailed analysis of both the parliamentary and the presidential system. I will also evaluate each system’s strengths and weaknesses, addressing any differences as well as any commonalities. Finally, I will conclude by using historical examples to analyze and support the

The third principle of individual economic decision-making relates to marginal decision-making. Rational people will think at the marginal level, making small changes or tweaks in their plans to achieve the desired objective. Rational people normally have a certain system or method he/she uses to achieve their objective and they understand that sometimes small changes must be made to accomplish this.

One common aspect across the three personalities is the degradation of the power of the rule by the elite. All three agree that there is no good democracy that comes from a select group. Not only because it is the elite in Japan, but it is those in power who are the problem. In Japan, a majority of the House of Chancellors are passed down through bloodline or company relation. We cannot be certain that those individuals are trained and knowledgeable in the problems in the political view. However, this also brings up the concern of public awareness of political issues. Today, according to Ikeda, Kohno, and Yamada’s studies on citizen understanding political concepts between 1960-1990, many Japanese citizens feel that they had no say in political decision making and that they were not well educated in the policies and issues being discussed. As we discussed in class, this is a common problem amongst democracy as a whole, not having a well educated, well informed general public voting. Finally, the aspect of religious liberty brought within the political spectrum. Although this contradicts John Locke’s beliefs of keeping the politic and religious spheres separate, this unity of religion ties together an ideal form of democracy for all three individuals. It is through applying Buddhist values into Japanese government that would provide a sense of patriotism through

Rational choice theory accepts that all individuals attempt to effectively expand their preference in any circumstance and in this way reliably attempt to minimize their misfortunes. The hypothesis depends on the possibility that all people construct their choices in light of sound figuring’s, act with discernment when picking, and intend to increment either delight or benefit. Rational choice theory likewise stipulates that all unpredictable social wonders are driven by individual human activities. Accordingly, if a business analyst needs to clarify social change or the activities of social organizations, he needs to take a look at the balanced choices of the people that make up the entirety.

Rational choice theory, also known simply as choice theory, is the assessment of a potential offender to commit a crime. Choice theory is the belief that committing a crime is a rational decision, based on cost benefit analysis. The would-be offender will weigh the costs of committing a particular crime: fines, jail time, and imprisonment versus the benefits: money, status, heightened adrenaline. Depending on which factors out-weigh the other, a criminal will decide to commit or forgo committing a crime. This decision making process makes committing a crime a rational choice. This theory can be used to explain why an offender will decide to commit burglary, robbery, aggravated assault, or murder.

Topic: A presidential democracy is more likely to produce strong, effective government than a parliamentary democracy.

However, a regime is no longer democratic the moment it violates at least one of the norms that make elections democratic, hence the name electoral authoritarianism. Furthermore, there are intrinsic powers of representative institutions in driving the dynamic of stability and change in such regimes. Thus, there is motivation for rulers to manipulate them and gain electoral legitimacy without bearing the risks of democratic uncertainty. The manipulative tactics used by authoritarians to repress are assumed to render electoral authoritarian regimes more resilient. The article also assumes the manipulation of representative institutions to create imperfectly informed citizens are identified as more authoritarian than

Many methods have been developed to simplify the decision making process. In this paper, the rational model of decision making will be discussed first. Then, some of the factors that cause deviation in the rational

Rational choice theory is actually more than one theory per se, but the basic similarities among its variants mean that they can be intelligibly amalgamated for the purposes of critiquing its implementation in political science. Therefore public choice theory, positive political science, rational actor models, and the economic approach to politics, among others, refer to what we may call rational choice theory for the purposes of this essay. (See Green and Shapiro 1994, xi.