ABSTRACT
The previous chapters have elucidated the ways in which international statebuilding can be understood as a paradigm through which the world can be comprehended and policy framed in a certain way. This paradigm, described here as one of post-liberal governance, is drawn out well by Douglass North, in his explanation of how behaviouralist rational choice approaches can become a template for the social sciences:
Building a theory of institutions on the foundation of individual choices is a step toward reconciling differences between economics and the other social sciences . . . The strength of microeconomic theory is that it is constructed on the basis of assumptions about human behavior . . . Institutions are a creation of human beings. They evolve and are altered by human beings; hence our theory must begin with the individual. At the same time, the constraints that institutions impose on individual choices are pervasive. Integrating individual choices with the constraints institutions impose on choice sets is a major step toward unifying social science research.
