Robert Grafstein

Giving desert its due : social justice and legal theory

One: Justice - Legal Justice - Social Justice.- 1: The Concept of Justice.- 2: Problems of Justification: Social Contract and Intuition.- 3: Substantive Justice and Equality before the Law.- Two: Justice as Equilibrium.- 4: The Principle of Equilibrium.- 5: Distribution According to Desert.- 6: Needs and Justice.- 7: Preferential Treatment.- 8: Punishment and the Theory of Justice.- Postscript.- 9: Beyond Social Justice.- Notes.- Selected Bibliography.

Institutional realism : social and political constraints on rational actors

Grafstein offers critiques of the conventional arguments, challenging their view that institutions are human creations automatically reformed or replaced as societys beliefs and preferences dictate. He argues that institutions are distinct physical entities not subject to human authorization.

An Evidential Decision Theory of Turnout

According to the standard analysis, which is grounded in causal decision theory, the rational decision to participate in mass elections depends on the probability of affecting the outcome. The resulting prediction of abstention is clearly mistaken. According to the alternative, evidential decision theory, voters calculate the conditional expected utility of participating rather than its causal consequences. A version of this theory is introduced into a game theoretic model of electoral participation. Under plausible conditions, the model yields positive turnout at equilibrium even as the size of the electorate increases without bound. The paper also considers the models utility in explaining group influences on political behavior and the supply of collective goods.

The Problem of Institutional Constraint

Political institutions are both human products and constraints on those participating within them. Focusing on rational choice theory and Marxist political theory, this paper shows that the problem of reconciling these two characteristics pervades modern political research. The upshot is a fundamental ambiguity in political sciences specification of what institutions are. The paper proposes a reconciliation of the two characteristics based on a conception of political institutions as particular aggregates of human individuals. The paper explores the political implications of this conception for the possibility of a society changing or eliminating institutional constraints.

A Realist Foundation for Essentially Contested Political Concepts

BELIEF continues to pervade academic life, at least officially, that reasoned arguments concerning the great political issues can persuade opponents. Unofficially, however, there seems to be a growing sentiment since the Enlightenment that without shared political and social values, specific arguments about democracy, justice, or liberty are bound to end, at best, in a mutual shrugging of shoulders. Each partys specific insights, according to this view, can only be appreciated by those sharing the value-laden conception on which those insights depend. Consider the notion of freedom. Nearly everyone would agree that being bound and gagged in a closet represents a loss of freedom. Paradigmatic examples like these reassure us that discussions of this notion are not empty exercises trading in homophonies. Yet is a worker with relatively few or very unappealing job opportunities truly free? What about the woman who agrees to become a surrogate mother out of economic necessity? Is a citizen politically free who does not vote due to lack of information, apathy, cumbersome registration procedures, or dejection? Apparently, differing answers to these questions reflect not merely different definitions of freedom but different values. We all know how the

The Puzzle of Weak Pocketbook Voting

This article investigates why predominantly self-interested voters exhibit weak pocketbook voting. Focusing on the USA, it estimates partisan government’s impact on household income and, based on the Permanent Income Hypothesis, models the conversion of that income into consumption, the source of voters’ utility in the model. The analysis implies that pocketbook voting is weak because anticipated policy is already incorporated in household consumption plans. Sociotropic variables are more powerful because they determine the relative value of partisan policies in the longer term. Using PSID data, estimates of the US parties’ impact on income generate a measure of partisan utility differences. This measure enters into a probit analysis using 1952—2000 ANES presidential election data. The pocketbook measure performs as predicted both independently and in relation to sociotropic variables.

Choice-Free Rationality: A Positive Theory of Political Behavior

Rational choice theory has become the basis for much of the recent work done in political science. Yet explanations of many political phenomena elude rational choice theorists. Robert Grafstein offers a modification to rational choice theory that extends its ability to explain social behavior.Grafstein argues that, instead of basing the analysis on the assumption that an actor will maximise her expected utility or her utility given the probability that the event will happen, we should define rationality as the maximisation of expected utility conditional on the probability that her act will bring the event about. This definition of utility, based on the work of Richard Jeffrey, restores the consequences of an individuals act to rational choice analysis. For example, in making a decision to vote, a conditional expected utility maximiser will compare the likelihood of victory for her preferred candidate given her own participation with the likelihood of a victory given her abstention.The author shows the theoretical implications of this new definition of rationality and then uses it to explain certain aspects of ethnic identity and mobilization, ideology, and altruism and intertemporal choice. He then explores the implications of this idea for policy analysis and econometrics. This book will provoke a debate about how work based in rational choice theories is done.Robert Grafstein is Professor of Political Science, University of Georgia.

Rationality as conditional expected utility maximization

Rationality is usually defined in terms of expected utility maximization. This paper argues for defining it in terms of conditional expected utility maximization by showing this conceptions superior explanatory power in the case of electoral participation and the honoring of political commitments. The paper also shows that the expected utility definition relies on a somewhat outdated metaphysics of decision-making is more in keeping with standard scientific assumptions about human agency and behavior

What Rational Political Actors Can Expect

This article analyzes the distinction between two definitions of rationality, standard expected utility maximization and an alternative that says rational individuals maximize their expected utility given their acts. The latter version can explain important political phenomena that challenge the standard approach. Documenting the empirical advantages of the second definition for political science, the article also argues that conditional expected utility maximizers are normatively rational. Moreover, the article demonstrates that some important and recognized work in political science has unwittingly relied on this version’s underlying assumptions. Finally, it formally shows how this decision theory can ground equilibria in two-person games.

Thick Rationality and the Missing "Brute Fact": The Limits of Rationalist Incorporations of Norms and Ideas: Comment

For the foreseeable future, rational choice theory will be a fundamental tool for interpreting human behavior because rationality is the conceptual glue linking preferences and beliefs-the core constituents of any interpretation-to meaningful actions. Interpretivism, therefore, is no alternative or even an independent supplement to rational choice theory. The theorys specific problems incorporating norms as other than brute facts arguably reflect troubling characteristics of norms themselves.