Rational Choice and

International Relations

Duncan Snidal
 Rational Choice
 Is one of the major approaches to the post-war
study of IR.
 Has helped define contemporary theoretical
debates about international politics
 Advanced our understanding of such topics as
the implications of anarchy and the possibility
of cooperation.
 Critiques to Rational Choice
 Developed a fetishism over mathematical
technique leading it to substitute abstract and
complicated models for common-sensical
theoretical development
 Not so strong (lacking empiricism)
 Deficient in explaining who the key actors are,
in explaining their interests, explaining the
origin of institutions, or in explaining how
these change.
 Goals

 Are not restricted to self-regarding or material

interests but could include other-regarding and
normative or ideational ‘goals’
 Rational Choice

 Is often a central part of the explanation even

where different motivations are also at play
 Can advance by taking the alternatives
seriously and seeing what elements it can
incorporate.
 One criticism of rational choice is that it takes
the identity and interests of actors as outside
the analysis
 Operating as a causal theory, it is often

criticized for assuming what is of greatest

interest, including the identities of the actors,
their interests and the institutional structures or
rules of the game.
Vocab: exogenous - taken as given
endogenous – to be explained
 Equilibrium
 Is a statement of consistency among specified
elements, that there is no pressure on any of
the elements to change given the values of the
other elements.
 An evaluation of a whole state of affairs and
claims only that the elements can co-exist with
one another while stipulating nothing about
their sequence or causal relation.
 Causal Analysis
 Is induced when substantive assumptions of
exogeneity and endogeneity are introduced for
tacital methodological reasons to trace the
implications of change in one element on
another while holding other elements fixed or
constant.
 RC Identification w/ Commitments
 Simplification – the notion that good
explanations are lean and minimize the
assumptions made. Also, to constrain its own
versatility so that its explanations do not
become tautologies.

 Generalization – (spread of horizons)

 Arms Race Model

 Lewis Frye Richardson, 1960

 Using coupled differential equations to

represent a dynamic axn-rxn process where
each nation-state acquires weapons in response
to the others’ level of armaments
 Barry O’Neill

 Uses game theory to underpin an explicitly

non-rational choice framework.
 Allies his work closely with constructivism
 Prisoner’s Dilemma

 Stephen Walt seeks to exclude it as an

example of formalization
 Examples of other games: ‘chicken’
‘coordination’ ‘assurance’
 Olson
 His great contribution was to connect the
formal analytics to wide-ranging political
examples and to extend the analysis through
soft theory.
 It provides an excellent example of how soft
rational choice can build off formalized work
to overturn well-entrenched conventional
wisdom and create a common framework for
substantial advances.
 Folk Theorem

 The result that cooperation can be supported

by strategies of reciprocity
 Downs & Rocke

 Show how domestic uncertainty will impede

cooperation and the impact this may have on
preferred institutional arrangements
 James Fearon
 Shows that when bargaining differences
among alternative cooperative outcomes are
introduced, the ‘shadow of the future’ that
enforces decentralized cooperation among
states also creates incentives that may impede
the attainment of cooperation.
 Barbara Koremenos

 Demonstrates that introducing flexibility to

cooperative agreements provides an
institutional means to overcome such problems
in many circumstances.
 Grieco

 Argues that liberal theories misspecify the

cooperation problem as an absolute gains
problem whereas states also care about relative
gains.
 Reformulation
 Allows us to capture nuances and details of the
case that we did not theoretically anticipate, or
to relax simplifying but unrealistic
assumptions.
 Verbal Theory
 A.k.a “soft rational choice”
 Provides more latitude
 Expected Utility theory of War
 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
 1981
 Analysis of Sanctions
 Sender
 Target
 Threatening to impose a sanction unless the
demand is met.
 Analytic Narratives
 Robert Bates
 To describe a more systematic use of rational
choice as a qualitative empirical research tool
for individual case studies.
 Are stronger tools than process-tracing or
other qualitative approaches to the extent that
rationalist theory restricts the range of
predictions and enable skepticism of the
application.
 Power Transition Theory
 Gilpin-Organski-Kugler
 Rapid shifts in power caused, for example, by
differential economic growth will make war
more likely.
 Powell proposes a formal model that
emphasizes the informational problems.
 James Fearon – making shifts in power
endogenous as concessions between states
affect their future power balance.
 Stigler & Becker
 Fixed preferences sometimes provide a
powerful analytic premise whereas
assumptions of unstable tastes really have only
been ad hoc arguments that disguise analytical
failures.