Theory, Stylized Heuristic or Self‐Fulfilling Prophecy? The Status of Rational Choice Theory in Public Administration

Abstract

Rational choice is intimately associated with positivism and naturalism, its appeal to scholars of public administration lying in its ability to offer a predictive science of politics that is parsimonious in its analytical assumptions, rigorous in its deductive reasoning and overarching in its apparent applicability. In this paper I re‐examine the ontology and epistemology which underpins this distinctive approach to public administration, challenging the necessity of the generally unquestioned association between rational choice and both positivism and naturalism. Rational choice, I contend, can only defend its claim to offer a predictive science of politics on the basis of an ingenious, paradoxical, and seldom acknowledged structuralism and a series of analytical assumptions incapable of capturing the complexity and contingency of political systems. I argue that analytical parsimony, though itself a condition of naturalism, is in fact incompatible with the deduction of genuinely explanatory/causal inferences. This suggests that the status of rational choice as an explanatory/predictive theory needs to be reassessed. Yet this is no reason to reject rational choice out of hand. For, deployed not as a theory in its own right, but as a heuristic analytical strategy for exploring hypothetical scenarios, it is a potent and powerful resource in post‐positivist public administration.

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