ABSTRACT
This chapter considers economic accounts of political opinions and behavior. Economic reasoning can be extended to social attitudes and behavior, but the political applications have been more thoroughly considered and debated. Advocates of an economic or what is known as a rational choice perspective, in particular, have argued forcefully that deductive theorizing is crucial to seeking and understanding important tendencies and regularities in public opinion and political behavior. While sociological and psychological theorizing have also attempted to be deductive, economic or rational choice approaches have done so more explicitly–and exclusively. Understanding human psychology and behavior apart from rational calculations can also lead to the construction of policy choices themselves that can directly produce rational choices. Economic theorizing has tried to cut through the complexity of individual-level psychology and social relations to focus on enduring regularities. Moreover, many rational choice models assume that people (or other agents) pursue narrow economic self-interest.
