Jon Elsterâs anthology harkens back to the heady days when rational choice theory first reared its head out of the primordial swamp of economics and made its first tentative steps on the solid ground of other areas of social science. Elsterâs introduction to the essays compiled within Rational Choice offers a great overview of key components of the theory, including a concise overview of game theory (pp. 7-9) that becomes essential when unraveling some of the more detailed essays presented later in the book. It also recommends some important criteria to consider when judging the suitability of a rational choice theory of any social problem. Specifically, Elster stresses the importance of rational choice theory to always present a parallel theory of rational belief ö itâs theoretical Siamese twin (p. 1). In addition, Elster states that rational choice theory must demonstrate that a given action was the best way to satisfy its accompanying desire, given the belief; that the belief is the best one to be formed, given the evidence; and that the amount of evidence collected is optimal (p. 16), a hermeneutic circle that serves well as criteria for the application of rational choice theory. Unfortunately, this criteria is largely inapplicable to the essays in Rational Choice, due to their abstract and theory-laden nature, not to mention the infancy of its empirical work at the time.

Derek Parfit starts the anthology off with an excruciatingly-detailed treament of game theory entitled "Prudence, Morality and The Prisonerâs Dilemma" in which he examines the "contributerâs dilemma", best exemplified by the free-rider effect. Noting that this phenomenon "often needs moral motives," Parfit nonetheless absolves rational choice theory of their discovery, glibly stating "that is not our problem. They exist." (p. 39), when a functionalist argument could have easily provided them. It seems that Parfit fails to come up with, the parallel theory of rational belief stressed by Elster, although his attempts to do so introduces a bevy of questions, such as the importance of an actors formal aims.

Amartya Sen iterates some of the main critiques of rational choice in "Behaviour and The Concept of Preferences." While noting that the Weak Axiom is actually sufficient for the theory, it may only be the case in analyses of market choices (p. 66). Further, Sen points out, by using the Prisonerâs Dilemma, that the revealed preference approachâs fundamental assumption of actorsâ underlying preferences being revealed in their choices is not always the case. (p. 71). The related assumption of the salient presence of an individualistic rational calculus is further demonstrated to not guarantee choices leading to utility maximization (p.79). Sen adds the additional burden of demonstrating an accurate assessment of all possible interpretations of a given preference and all possible preferential implications of a given action to the heavy load already placed upon rational choice by Elsterâs criteria.

Senâs critiques are partially dealt with in John C. Harsanyiâs "Advances in Understanding of Rational Behaviour," by introducing an ethics branch of rational behaviour (p. 89) and the concept of equilibrium points (p. 105). This appears to remedy the tendency to

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disregard the "social animal" nature of humans (p. 73), but without much empirical evidence to back it up.

Gary Becker proposes to "spell out the principal attributes of the economic approach" (p. 108) in his essay, but instead he attempts to illustrate the universality of the approach to all social phenomenon, explicitly stating that "all human behaviour can be viewed as involving participants who maximize their utility from a stable set of preferences and accumulate an optimal amount of information and other inputs in a variety of markets." (p. 119). Unfortunately, in cases like homosexuality or the failure of punitive sentencing to invoke a deterrent, this is universality is not readily-apparent and the lack of empirical evidence provided by Becker further challenges his own assertions.

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman qualify their application of rational choice to "decision problems in which people systematically violate the requirements of consistency and coherence" (p. 123), ignoring unsystematic violations of these requirements. Again, the inability of rational choice to deal with values is noted as a theoretical flaw (p. 138). James G. March further demonstrates the difficulty of applying rational choice to actions involving tastes, stating that only "by suitably manipulating the concept of tastes, one can save the classical theories of choice as Îexplanationsâ of behaviour in a formal sense, but probably only at the cost of stretching a good idea into a doubtful ideology." (p. 155).

Nonetheless, Raymond Boudon champions the work of Durkheim and Toqueville in explaining how social leveling can increase frustration, using game theory to buttress relative deprivation theory and the concept of reference groups (p. 174). His explanation of how stratification determines the effects of "the self-reproduction of classes" (p. 189) and attentuates "the general rate of frustration" is the first example in the book of rational choice theoryâs applicability to macro-level social processes.

The other attempt in the book to examine macro-level process or introduce an empirical application of the theory falls flat. Samuel Popkin makes some incredulous propositions in "The Political Economy of Peasant Society" that he fails to back up with convincing empirical evidence, though he at least attempts to provide some. More fatally, Popkin sets up a "strawman" argument, positing that moral economists view pre-capitalist village societies as communal, consensus-based, non-stratified social groupings ö a Marxist utopia, which he naturally proves never existed.

More than a decade later, Hechter and Kanazawa have the privilege of looking back on a mountain of empirical work done since Rational Choice, which they then use to answer many of the criticisms of rational choice and many of the weaknesses of the earlier work on the subject, as well as providing numerous empirical examples from a wide array of fields that point to the usefulness and universality of the theory.