Christiano - Is Normative Rational Choice Theory Self-Defeating

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Is Normative Rational Choice Theory SelfDefeating?Author(s): by Thomas ChristianoReviewed work(s):Source: Ethics, Vol. 115, No. 1 (October 2004), pp. 122-141Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/421979 .

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Ethics 115 (October 2004): 122141 2004 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0014-1704/2004/11501-0001$10.00

122

REVIEW ESSAY

Is Normative Rational Choice TheorySelf-Defeating?*

Thomas Christiano

RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY AND POLITICS

Rational choice approaches to politics have, in the main, been con-cerned to pursue two principal aims. First, they attempt to explain andpredict the operation of economic and political institutional structureson the basis of a conception of human beings as homo economicus. Publicchoice theory, game theory, neoclassical economic theory, law and eco-nomics, and some of social choice theory all share this explanatory aim.Second, rational choice theories attempt to justify and criticize insti-tutional structures by showing that when in place, the institutions arelikely to bring about outcomes that are for the common good or not,under the assumption that they operate in the way that the explanatorytheory says they do. This evaluation and justification are done with aneye to justifying policy proposals for the reform of those institutionsand in some cases even the total transformation of economic and po-

litical institutions. This is the practical aim of rational choice theory. Inthe pursuit of the explanatory and practical aims, these approachesconceive of rational agents as pursuing their own interests understoodbroadly in conflictual terms (that is where the interests are not inher-ently harmonious).1 The rational choice theorist then argues in favor

* This is a review essay of Russell Hardin, Liberalism, Constitutionalism and Democracy(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) and Geoffrey Brennan and Alan Hamlin, Dem-ocratic Devices and Desires (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). References tothese books will be in parentheses in the text under the authors names. I thank CharlesLarmore and John Deigh for their helpful comments on a previous draft.

1. For the most part, rational choice theorists think of the mainstream approach ascommitted to the thesis that agents are self-interested, and I will simplify the discussionin what follows by using this account. But some theorists have used the idea that the

agents are nontuistic in the sense that they are not inherently concerned with theinterests of those they strategically interact with, for example, people in another society

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Christiano Is Normative Rational Choice Theory Self-Defeating? 123

of those institutions that tend to bring about good outcomes given theseassumptions. The explanatory and practical aims are at odds with oneanother, or so I shall argue.

Mainstream rational choice theory, as I shall conceive of it, adheresstrictly to the thesis of homo economicus. In other words, it explains theoperation of institutions and justifies the reform of those institutionsunder the assumption that individuals normally maximize their ownutility in every action they undertake. This need not entail that individ-uals always and everywhere deliberate in terms of maximization of utility,but it does require that their actions nearly always display utility maxi-mization (with allowances due to irrationality). By contrast, revisioniststhink of individuals, at least in a large set of cases, as not maximizingutility in every action but as adopting dispositions to act that maximize

utility for the person on the whole. Some have thought, for example,that a person who has the disposition to act cooperatively in prisonersdilemma situations is likely to do better in the long run than the person

who maximizes utility and thus defects in all such situations.The mainstream approach is still the dominant approach to rational

choice theory, though the revisionist approach has acquired many alliesover the years.2 Geoffrey Brennan and Alan Hamlin have more recentlymade the revisionist approach a cornerstone of their approach to po-litical institutions and democracy in particular. Russell Hardin, by con-trast, follows the mainstream approach to rational choice theory.

These two books display the diversity of ideas that rational choicetheory has given rise to in the past twenty years. Anyone who wishes tolearn about the power and complexity of rational choice theory and itspotential for subtle and illuminating analyses of the development andmaintenance of political institutions can do no better than to read these

works.What is striking about these two books is that they both notice a

central problem with taking the mainstream approach and are con-cerned to overcome the problem, but they do so in opposite ways.Hardin and Brennan and Hamlin notice that if we are to conceive ofrational agents as for the most part self-interested, the practical aim ofthe rational choice approach may be undermined at least to a significantdegree. They note that the mainstream approach to the explanation ofthe operation of economic and political institutions tends to result ina highly deterministic approach to those institutions and that this tends

or possibly animals. The differences between these two types of motivations are important,but the mainstream approach treats the nontuistic motivation as if it operated in the same

way as the purely self-interested motivation that takes little or no account of the interestsof others.

2. See David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986),for the most ambitious philosophical effort to ground morality in the revisionist way.



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124 Ethics October 2004

to undercut the practical aim of rational choice theory of proposingreforms for those institutions. Hardin sides with the mainstream viewand expresses considerable skepticism about the prospects for reformof economic and political institutions even when these reforms wouldbring about significant improvements in the economic performancesof the societies in question over the long term. Rational choice theoryall but loses its practical aim in this context while maintaining its ex-planatory aim. Brennan and Hamlin attempt to preserve both the ex-planatory and practical aims of rational choice theory by jettisoning themainstream approach to human behavior and adopting a revisionist

view.In this article, I want to go into some depth about this feature of

rational choice theory. It has seemed to me that it has gone mostly

undiscussed in the literature even though it represents a profound setof problems in rational choice theory. Though they notice the problem,Hardin and Brennan and Hamlin do not take the full measure of theproblem as seriously as they should, and the consequence is that theirapproaches remain mired in paradox. Or so I shall argue.

BASIC STRUCTURE DETERMINISM

What I mean by basic structure determinism is the thesis that thedevelopment, maintenance, and decline of basic structural institutionsin society is determined by forces that are beyond the capacity of humanbeings to guide and design. Political institutions do not develop the waythey do because human beings think that this is the best way for themto develop. Political institutions and arrangements are largely the resultof the unintended cumulative consequences of many human actions.They do not develop in accord with the ideals that human beings de-

velop for their lives together. Their development is guided, to use Bren-nan and Hamlins expression, by an invisible hand.

Basic structure determinism is a bit like determinism with regardto individuals. But unlike some forms of individual determinism, basicstructure determinism is a hard kind of determinism. It is not merelythe case that agency is determined by external forces; in basic structuredeterminism, there is no agency at all, in the sense that the developmentof these institutions is not guided by human design. Political and socialinstitutions are the product of the cumulative effects of many peopleacting with a great variety of different purposes, and the development

of the institutions overall cannot be said to be determined by any kindof design, choice, or plan. The development of political institutions isnot up to human beings.

It is important to note the distinction between basic structural in-stitutions and other kinds of institutions. By basic structural institutionsI have in mind the basic institutions of the market, the political system,



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and the basic informal institutions of society such as the family andreligious institutions.3 Though these are formed, maintained, and de-stroyed by forces that are beyond the control of human beings, humanbeings do have the capacities to shape their lives to some degree withinthe framework set by these institutions. The basic structural institutionsset the parameters for individual choice, and basic structure determin-ism does not imply that individuals are not free within the parametersdefined by these institutions. While the basic structure is not subject tohuman control, it provides limited opportunities for people to take somecontrol of their own lives. The thesis of basic structure determinismdoes not imply a thesis of determinism with regard to individual action,nor does it imply that all social institutions are beyond the intelligentdesign and control of human beings. Individuals can still freely and

intelligently design associations within the context of the basic structuralinstitutions.

The fact that basic structural institutions are not subject to humandesign or agency is compatible with those institutions changing as aresult of intentional human actions. Political, economic, and social in-stitutions normally do not change without being the result of intentionalhuman actions. But the changes that occur in the basic structural in-stitutions are the unintended consequences of the accumulation ofmany actions, according to this form of determinism. The actions thatare designed to bring about intended changes in the basic structure ofsociety almost always fail to achieve their goals. When they do achievetheir goals it is more a result of happenstance than the will of a particularperson or group of persons.

The thesis of basic structure determinism is also compatible withpeople making marginal changes to the basic structural institutions. Onemight attempt to change aspects of the committee system in the UnitedStates Congress, for example, and in some cases succeed. And to thisextent, there is still some room for rational choice theorists to makepractically effective recommendations for change. But it is a highly lim-ited space and is certainly much more limited than rational choicetheorists normally have in mind for the practical purposes they pursue.Furthermore, incremental changes, when added up, usually do not pro-duce the intended overall effects that they may have originally beendesigned to produce. As soon as ones ambitions turn to larger scaleinstitutional changes and effects, the rule of unintended consequences

takes over.This implies an inevitable vagueness in the thesis of basic structuredeterminism since it is going to be difficult to determine exactly when

3. See John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996),chap. 6, for a discussion of this notion.



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a change is marginal or incremental and when it is a change to theinstitutions overall. But even so, the thesis has enormous implicationsfor our understanding of the legitimate purposes of rational choicetheory.

Russell Hardins book defends a roughly deterministic conceptionof politics. He says: For most people in the United States most of thetime, the order that the US Constitution brings about is a part of thenecessity of the world in which they live (Hardin, p. 313). And thislatter claim is an understatement of the view that he holds. Brennanand Hamlin assert this kind of determinism when they say: Invisiblehands are the only kinds of hand that are allowable in this world ofunrelieved egoism (p. 40). Control is not exerted by any human agentover the basic structure of the social and political world if agents are

purely rational egoists; only an invisible hand controls the system.

HARDINS BASIC ARGUMENT

The thesis of basic structure determinism is grounded in a number offactors pertaining to human choices and their cumulative impact. Themost important component is the thesis that individuals are primarilyrational egoists. Hardins claims for his approach are modest, as manyrational choice approaches have come to be. In one of many caveatsfor his approach, Hardin states: Neither moral commitment nor terrorseems likely to induce widespread creativity and innovation, but if eitherof them or if some other system not dependent on stable expectationsand incentives could be made to work, then much of what I will sayhere might be irrelevant (p. 232).

In addition to the thesis of rational egoism, there are four basiccomponents to the argument as I understand it. (1) The basic structureof any society is made stable only by being a coordination point for allof its members that serves the interests of a few well-situated and powerfulminorities. (2) Each person has negligible impact on the developmentof the basic structure. (3) There are severe cognitive limitations to thecapacities of individuals for understanding how society works. (4) Whenpeople do consider change, there is substantial disagreement about howto do it and where to take it.

THE COORDINATION ACCOUNT OF POLITICAL ORDER

The most explicit aim of the arguments of the book is to defend a

coordination theory of political order (Hardin, p. 12). Hardin claimsthat the two criteria of workability that distinguish the successful work-ings of liberalism, constitutionalism and democracy are the acquiescenceof most people most of the time in the political order established bythese and the mutual advantage of the politically effective groups ofsociety (p. 316). The coordination account of political order asserts



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that a constitution must be a coordination point for the members ofsociety in order to succeed. A coordination point is a social arrangement,institution, or even a convention that is such that no individual has anincentive to defect from the arrangement. In this sense, constitutionsthat serve to coordinate the members of society are self-enforcing. Theystructure the incentives of individuals so that those individuals havereasons to stick to the rules for the most part. The most obvious examplesof coordination points are the rules of the road. If the rule is to driveon the right-hand side, it is in each persons interest to drive on theright-hand side.

The coordination account of political order is distinct from thecontractarian account of political order. The latter states that consti-tutions solve large-scale prisoners dilemma problems and advance the

common good in doing so. In these problems individuals prefer thatothers undertake the burdens of an arrangement while they free rideand receive the benefits of the arrangements. Prisoners dilemma ac-counts of political order start with the observation that society faceslarge-scale prisoners dilemma problems, such as the need for publicorder and a system of property and contract, which can be solved onlyby introducing enforcers who punish defectors from the collectivelydesirable behaviors. As Brennan and Hamlin and Hardin point out, themain trouble with these accounts is that they fail to take account of theenforcers incentives, which are often different from the interests of therest of society (Brennan and Hamlin, p. 39; Hardin, p. 87). Hence, thesesolutions are not stable. By contrast, in a coordination point each personhas an incentive to stick to the coordination to the extent that othersdo, and so the arrangement is self-enforcing.

Hardins point is not that economic or political liberalism, democ-racy, or a constitution is necessarily a coordination point. It is that forthese institutions to be workable, they must coordinate the members ofthe society. Much of the book consists in detailed accounts of the con-ditions under which these institutions have been coordination pointsfor the members of the society in which they occurred and when theyfailed (Hardin, p. 194). Also, liberalism and democracy are not necessaryconditions of coordination. Hardin gives a number of examples of non-liberal and nondemocratic arrangements that coordinated the actionsof the members (p. 284).

The most basic condition under which these institutions are co-

ordination points is when they serve the mutual advantage of the mostefficacious groups in the society (Hardin, p. 3). Then the powerfulgroups can coordinate on the institutions (assuming they have prefer-ences in favor of mutual accommodation as opposed to preferences thatplace the pursuit of glory or the religious conversion of others aboveall other concerns), and then the less-powerful groups must go along.



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The less-powerful groups must acquiesce in the scheme that is to themutual advantage of the powerful.

This mutual advantage account is not meant to provide a normativeunderpinning of the institutions that are sustained by it. Hardin re-peatedly reminds us that the stability provided by institutions that co-ordinate individuals actions is only a necessary condition of the nor-mative justification of those institutions (p. 38). It can be the case thatthe institutions on which a society is coordinated are such that the greatmajority of subjects would be better off coordinating on other institu-tions. The trouble is that individuals cannot depart from the coordi-nation individually or in small groups without harming themselves. Theonly way that a superior coordination point could come about for mostof the society is if there were massive recoordination on new institutions.

But this is nearly always impossible to achieve because the individualswho might desire this change face massive collective action problemsas well as uncertainty, and so individuals go along with the institutionseven if most of them would be better off under alternative arrangements(Hardin, p. 15).

With the coordination account of political order in place we cansee how the other three elements of the argument fit in. The secondelement is that individuals rarely have much impact on the social andpolitical institutions in which they live. So individuals do not have in-centives to try to change the constitutional order under which they live.The expected value of their actions is so low in this area that the self-interest of individuals inclines them to concern themselves with otherissues.

Third, ignorance about the nature and workings of social and po-litical institutions ensures that whether constitutions work or not islargely a matter of chance and happenstance (Hardin, p. 234). The U.S.Constitution worked, Hardin argues, largely because it didnt take astand on what the best economic structure for society is. It failed totake such a stand not as a result of the wisdom of the framers but as aresult of the fact that the two main powers in the society, plantationagrarians and commercial interests, could not agree on one (Hardin,p. 237). As a consequence, the constitution merely enabled trade tooccur between the states without interference between them. This wassomething that benefited the main interests in society in ways they didntenvision.

The lack of knowledge about how institutions work in general is afunction of the general limits to human cognitive abilities. The devel-opment and workings of large societies are extremely complex and arefar beyond the capacities of individuals to understand. For most peoplethe ignorance is the result of the division of labor of any complex society.Under these circumstances, people will focus on their individual tasks



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and not on the whole. Ignorance also results from the fact that sinceindividuals have very little impact on the basic institutions under whichthey live and their basic concerns are to advance their own interests,they have little incentive for coming to understand the whole society.This is the thesis of the rationality of ignorance argued for by AnthonyDowns.4

A fourth reason for the deterministic thesis is that people disagreeabout the proper ideals for society. As a consequence, even when aperson attempts to realize some ideal in practice, others are likely notto help him in this to the extent that they have different ideals and,

what is more likely, when most are acting principally in their self-interest.While one person might set in motion a vision of a certain kind ofsociety, the thousands of other people on whom this person depends

to realize this vision are likely to carry things in very different directionsfrom the one originally intended. Needless to say, none of them willget his or her way for long.5

BASIC STRUCTURE DETERMINISM AND DEMOCRACY

Democracy has traditionally been one of the main supports for the ideathat human beings can have some control over their own collectivedestiny. The thought is that in democracy the people take control ofthe political institutions under which they live by debating the meritsof different institutions and choosing them through voting.

Hardin argues against this sanguine view of democracy by invokingthe view that individuals in a democracy have minimal impact on theoutcomes of democratic decision making, and as a result they have littleincentive to have informed opinions about what ought to be done. Asa consequence, the outcomes of elections are for the most part not veryedifying (Hardin, p. 166). In addition, given the amount of disagree-ment in society, the idea that a society can determine its future inaccordance with its own preference is undermined by Arrows theorem,

which says essentially that there is no rational social preference overoutcomes under the normal circumstances of politics (Hardin, p. 154).

Hardin moderates this conclusion by noting that in times of crisiscitizens do have a heightened awareness of political matters and play a

4. See Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row,1959).

5. Hardins estimation of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century progressive andteleological accounts of history and society is made evident by the fact that he nevermentions them. The utilitarian tradition he comes from, however, is strongly attached tothe idea of progress. For example, Sidgwick argues that commonsense morality is guidedby an unconscious utilitarianism (in The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. [Indianapolis: Hackett,1981], p. 454), and Mill argues something quite similar in Utilitarianism(Indianapolis:Hackett, 1979), p. 22.



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to help a person in need, and the injunction to enhance welfare maydirect me to do this. The third enjoins us directly to bring about thekinds of institutions that would bring about optimal states of affairs.This approach determines what institutions we ought to bring about.This concern is action guiding. But the actions it enjoins are institution-building actions. It is meant to tell policy makers and legislators whatkinds of institutions they ought to bring about. It is this last practicalaim of most rational choice theorists, I claim, that is incompatible withthe determinism implied by rational choice theory.

The second and third concerns are both practical. They enjoin usto act so as to bring about human welfare. The second concern justtells us to do whatever we can to bring about more welfare. But thethird concern picks out a particular set of actions and enjoins us to

perform them for the sake of human welfare. It says that one mustengage in institution-building actions to enhance human welfare. Log-ically, one can abandon the third concern while holding on to thesecond. But as we will see below, utilitarians may have some difficultyactually adopting the second concern without the third.

Brennan and Hamlin argue that the first concern is incompatiblewith the mainstream rational choice approach: in an egoistic universeagents are committed to a language in which good can only meangood for me or more particularly, in my interests. . . . In that worldthere is simply no meaningful possibility of distinctively moral or jus-tificatory argument (Brennan and Hamlin, p. 26). In effect, they assertthat the commitments of rational choice theory are metaethically in-compatible with any kind of moral or even welfare economic approachto economic and political institutions. This seems to me to be overstated.Though this observation may hold for some rational choice theoristssuch as James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, it need not hold for mostrational choice assessments of political institutions.6 While James Buch-anan and many other public choice theorists are what we might callnormative individualists in the sense captured by the above quotes,many theorists are not. Most theorists in this tradition, including RussellHardin, are utilitarian even though they hold that self-interest is themainspring of human motivation. They deny the incompatibility of the

view that human beings are motivated nearly exclusively by consider-ations of self-interest and the existence of moral principles that implythat, for example, some kinds of institutions are better than others are.

So the evaluative concern need not be undermined by the commitment

6. See James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent (Ann Arbor:University of Michigan Press, 1962). The metaethical claimis statedand defended explicitlyin James Buchanan and Geoffrey Brennans The Reason of Rules (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1986).



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of mainstream rational choice theory to direct rational egoism. And,for many utilitarian thinkers, it is consistent to hold both that humanbeings are morally required to bring about the greatest amount of hap-piness and that human beings are nearly exclusively motivated by self-interest. The reason for this is that what makes an action the right actionfor the utilitarian are the results of action and not the motives behindthe action. And moral requirements need not, as a matter of logic, besprings of human motivation, or so many consequentialist theoristsmaintain.7

But the third institution-building concern that is characteristic ofmainstream rational choice theorists is in trouble if the difficulties Ihave outlined above cannot be overcome. The combination of the as-sumption of homo economicus and the exhortation to bring about the

best basic structural political institutions seems to be a self-defeatingapproach to politics if basic structure determinism is true. And thereason for this is that it is simply not within the power of human beings

voluntarily and by design to bring about desirable basic structuralchange given the thesis of basic structure determinism. The develop-ment of basic structural institutions is guided only by an invisible hand.

DETERMINISM AND NORMATIVE POLITICAL THEORY

Though Hardins book is not primarily a work of moral philosophy, itis intended to have a significant impact on moral and political debates.Its contribution stems from its resolute adherence to the claim thatwhen the social sciences were detached from philosophy, social phi-losophy became unmoored and the claim that political philosophy mustbe closely attached to social science (Hardin, p. 318). The commitmentto this idea derives from a strong version of the maxim that oughtimplies can.

The idea of possibility behind the doctrine of ought implies canas it is used by Hardin is defined by the motivations and knowledge ofhuman beings and the constraints imposed by the circumstances in

which they find themselves. The explanatory part of rational choicetheory tells us what human beings will do under various circumstancesand thereby defines the limits of what is possible in human social andpolitical interactions.

But there are two different ways in which we can understand thelimitations on the possible imposed by rational choice theory. The first

is the workability limitation. Hardin often writes as if the limits of work-

7. See David Brink, Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics(Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1989), for a statement of this view. His argument for the claim that moralrequirements do not give reasons for action is grounded in the observation that one canimagine a perfectly amoral person who is not irrational.



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ability are the same as the limits on the possibility of social arrangements.Hardin argues, for instance, that an egalitarian society is not a workablesociety (p. 206). It will be unstable and cannot survive. And he takes themaxim of ought implies can to imply that it is not true that we oughtto bring about an egalitarian society. More generally, self-enforcing insti-tutions are workable for rational choice theorists, and others are not.

But a second way of understanding the limits of the possible is alsopresent in Hardins work. This concerns the limits on what can bebrought about under the circumstances and given the facts describedby rational choice theory. A society could be perfectly workable in thesense that it would be stable if it were to exist, but it cannot be broughtabout under the circumstances. And here too there are two different

ways in which a society can be brought about. It can be brought aboutby design or can simply come about. What the thesis of basic structuredeterminism denies is that a society, any society, can be brought aboutby design. Let us call this the basic structure determinism limitationon the possible.

Hardins invocation of ought implies can is meant to be a criticismof much of the project of political philosophy, but there are two waysin which traditional political philosophers can respond. First, they canand do often respond by denying the truth of rational choice theory.Usually this starts with a denial of the basic thesis that individuals pursueprimarily their own interests.8 Second, many political philosophers thinkthat it is worthwhile arguing in favor of certain political ideals, whichmay not be fully realizable in practice but can nevertheless serve as

ideals to be approximated. Since these ideals can be approximated theycan serve as standards against which societies are to be measured evenif no society can ever fully satisfy them. To the extent that a society failsto realize the appropriate ideal it is deemed unjust.

Now if rational choice theory were true and basic structure deter-minism were also correct, then it is unclear what the point of articulatingsocial and political ideals would be. The reason for this is that even theattempt to approximate the ideals would be, for the most part, futile.

Whether a society approximates an ideal or not would be beyond thecapacities of human beings to control. There might be a kind of the-oretical interest in this activity, but it would not satisfy the aspirationsof most people who engage in this activity. So basic structure determin-

ism, while not completely defeating the traditional activities of politicalphilosophy, would certainly be a real threat to the purposes of politicalphilosophers.

8. The most prominent and well-developed position on this is in John Rawls, A Theoryof Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), chap. 8.



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DOES HARDIN ESCAPE THE PROBLEM?Hardin thinks that these arguments show the power and relevance ofutilitarian argument (p. 319) and refute many of the rival moral the-ories to utilitarianism. It might at first blush appear that Hardins util-itarianism can escape the puzzle of basic structure determinism and theproblem this poses for the aim of institution building. After all, it is stillpossible for a utilitarian to say that one ought to try to maximize utility

within the context of institutions that cannot be changed by design. Actutilitarianism survives the critical edge of basic structure determinismbecause it can direct us to maximize utility even when we cannot expectto be able to build institutions. Here, the second normative concernmight appear to survive even if the third normative concern is defeated.

Unfortunately this approach will not save most utilitarians or Har-din from the problem of basic structure determinism. The reason forthis is that most utilitarians have been defenders of the claim that it isinstitutions that make the main contribution to utility, and Hardin hasbeen the most eloquent spokesman for this tradition in contemporarymoral and political philosophy.9 Classical utilitarians such as Bentham,Mill, and Sidgwick all argued that the formal and informal institutionsof society play the major role in bringing about human happiness. Ben-tham thought that people were simply hedonistic egoists. Mill arguedthat individuals ought to pursue their own interests and the well-beingof those closely related to them if they wish to bring about the mostutility.10 The right kinds of political and social institutions could channelthese motivations so as to bring about the most human happiness.

One might think that the institutionalist aspect of utilitarianismneed not undermine the utilitarian injunction to act to bring aboutmore utility. But this possibility is not obviously open to utilitarian think-ers. The reason for this has to do with the rationale for institutions onthe utilitarian account. The rationale for institutions is precisely theclaim that efforts at maximizing utility within the context of institutionsmay bring about locally good outcomes, but the conjunction of manysuch actions may, in the context of problematic institutions, bring about

worse outcomes overall. And the implication of this for many utilitariansis that if one wants to bring about greater utility one must change orreform the institutions within which people act. This conclusion isstrengthened by the mainstream rational choice claim, accepted bymany utilitarians, that individuals are primarily self-interested and in-

stitutions are necessary to channel that self-interest to bring aboutgreater utility. And one must not in general attempt to bring about

9. See Russell Hardin, Morality within the Limits of Reason (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1988).

10. See Mill, p. 18.



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greater utility except by bringing about changes in institutions. Utili-tarians have been the most important champions of the thesis that thecommon good comes about through an invisible hand.

So we can see that the problem that basic structural determinismposes for many political theories also arises for most variants of utili-tarianism because of the institutionalist bent of most utilitarian views.Basic structural determinism is incompatible with the practical aims ofmost variants of utilitarianism.

Many rational choice theorists miss this conclusion because theydont always see that the theory that establishes the limitations on the

workability of a society also establishes limitations on the possibility ofbringing about institutional change by design. The theory with whichthey determine the limits of the workable implies basic structure de-

terminism and so defeats the practical aim of the theory itself.

RATIONAL CHOICE MADE MORAL

Brennan and Hamlins approach can be read as an attempt to avoidthe kind of determinism we find in Hardins approach to rational choice.They are concerned with the implications of the hypothesis of homoeconomicus for the viability of efforts at reform that constitutes the aimof many public choice theorists. The problem of determinism arises intheir discussion of the mechanisms of enforcement necessary to ensurethat rational egoists behave in a way that promotes Pareto optimal out-comes in prisoners dilemmalike situations. The problem is that theenforcement mechanisms must be manned by self-interested maximiz-

ers. They argue that if the enforcer is herself a rational egoist, thesimple fact that the act of enforcement benefits the two original playersdoes not provide her with a reason to act in that way. If the enforcer isgranted powers sufficient to ensure compliance by B, she must be as-sumed to use those powers to maximize her own pay-off, regardless ofthe impacts on A and B. There is nothing to show that the enforcerspay-offs are connected to As and Bs in the relevant way (Brennan andHamlin, p. 39). In general, the idea is that while some enforcementmay be possible within an institution, the institution as a whole mustbe self-enforcing in the sense that it operates only by channeling theself-interest of the individuals who act within it. Invisible hands are theonly kinds of hand that are allowable in this world of unrelieved egoism(Brennan and Hamlin, p. 40).

Unlike Hardin, Brennan and Hamlin argue that there is a solutionto this problem. They argue that there is no reason to put away the aimof reform. Their solution is to argue that in fact rational agents arelikely to develop moral dispositions that regulate their behaviors andpolitical institutions. In particular, they argue that in the context of



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political institutions the motivations of individuals are likely to be mor-ally virtuous, at least given certain kinds of institutional structure.

The thought seems to be that once rational agents become moralagents in the political system, society will then be ruled by the visiblehand of the agents. This is possible because they assert that there isa roughly shared moral code in terms of which moral agents will guidethe society (Brennan and Hamlin, p. 64). To the extent that the societyis guided by individuals who are disposed to act morally in their politicalactions and share the same moral dispositions, the society is likely tobe guided by the shared moral code of the society.

Given this roughly shared moral code, Brennan and Hamlin arguethat there are a variety of mechanisms that are likely to induce peopleto adopt dispositions to act in accordance with that code. First, individ-

uals will be induced to adopt dispositions to be trustworthy. Second,voting is likely to express adherence to that code of morality. Third,certain kinds of political institutions give political elites incentives toadopt those dispositions in their political behavior.

Let us take a look at each one of these claims in turn. Brennan andHamlin argue that self-interested agents have incentives to become mor-ally virtuous (p. 36). The most fundamental virtue that self-interestedagents have reason to acquire is the virtue of trustworthiness. Rationalegoists are not trustworthy as a rule; they are inclined to defect fromagreed-upon courses of action when those situations are structured likeprisoners dilemmas.

Let us call someone who attempts to maximize utility in every actiona straightforward rational maximizer. Brennan and Hamlin, followingDavid Gauthier, argue that if people are reasonably translucent (mean-ing that their dispositions are somewhat transparent to others), thenstraightforward rational maximizers will not be accepted as participantsin mutually beneficial exchange because of others awareness of thelikelihood that they will defect (p. 41). On the other hand, those whohave a disposition to cooperate, and whose dispositions are apparentto others, will be accepted as participants in mutually beneficial ex-changes. As a consequence, those who are cooperators will end up betteroff than the straightforward rational maximizers. So it will be to thebenefit of individuals to abandon the trait of straightforward rationalmaximizing in favor of a disposition to be trustworthy or to engage in

what Gauthier calls constrained maximization.11

One major worry about this approach is that it does not actuallyshow why people have reason to be moral; at best it shows only thatthey have reason to be reasonably cooperative with at least some others.

11. For the use of the terms straightforward and constrained maximization, seeGauthier, p. 167.



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Whether that cooperation is moral or not will depend on what they arecooperating about. They may well cooperate on criminal schemes withthose who are like-minded. As long as they have the power to carry outtheir designs with others, they may not care whether the outsiders know

what their dispositions are. A second worry is that the assumption ofgeneral translucency seems quite unmotivated, especially in many of thecontexts in which it will be needed. Many of the transactions in whichpeople engage in any complex society are with strangers. The thoughtthat one is likely to be able to detect the motives of strangers seems abit stretched. We will see that this assumption becomes particularly im-plausible in the most important context in which Brennan and Hamlin

wish to use it.The second thesis in opposition to the hypothesis of universal ra-

tional egoism is the thesis of expressive voting. Brennan and Hamlinargue that in the context of voting in large-scale constituencies, votersdo not have incentives to vote on the basis of a calculation of self-interest,because the chance that ones vote will make a difference is very nearzero (p. 175). Brennan and Hamlin argue that in this context, therational agent will vote in an expressive way. They will express theirmoral opinions or their emotional states. The reason for this is thatthere is no opportunity cost for this expression. The idea is that whenpeople are in circumstances where their actions have no consequencesfor their interests, they no longer regulate their actions by rational self-interest. When ones self-interest is no longer in question, Brennan andHamlin claim, a person acts merely expressively. And one circumstancein which a persons action has no impact on his interests is the circum-stance of voting in the polling booth.

Here the connection between what I have called the problem ofbasic structure determinism and expressive voting is quite clear. Theysay: If expressive voting cannot operate as an invisible hand it could,at least in principle, operate as a visible hand. That is, voters mightsystematically vote their views of the public interest (Brennan and Ham-lin, p. 176).

Brennan and Hamlin give two kinds of arguments for the expressivevoting hypothesis. First, they argue that anything other than expressivevoting would be irrational. Second, they argue that the thesis that votersvote strategically yields a number of odd implications. They claim thatif voters vote strategically, voter turnout in two candidate elections

should be zero or near zero. The reason for this is that candidates willseek out the median voter and thus will usually end up at the sameposition in the issue space or very close to one another. Strategicallyminded voters will see very little difference between candidates and thusnot turn out at all (Brennan and Hamlin, p. 133).

This second argument relies on a number of assumptions that are



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usually not satisfied in ordinary politics. First, the argument relies onthe assumption that candidates know where the median voter stands.But surely this is not something about which candidates have preciseknowledge. Such knowledge is hard to come by. Moreover, the pref-erences of the voters in the middle are likely to shift with changingcircumstances as are the preferences of most voters. So candidates willlikely have different estimates of where the median voter is. Second,candidates cannot stray too far from the political party positions theyhave taken in the past; otherwise instrumental voters will think of themas not reliable for bringing about outcomes they want. And if they straytoo far from the political party that supports their electoral efforts, theyare likely to lose the support of their parties. And the political partiesare likely to display some inertia in making changes. So candidates for

election are not likely to be quite as flexible in deciding what positionsto take as the Brennan and Hamlin argument above requires.

There is another serious difficulty with the expressive voting hy-pothesis. Brennan and Hamlin recognize that expressive voters may notexpress moral attitudes when they are in the polling booth; they mayrather express more sinister attitudes or attitudes of vengefulness andhatred. Rational choice theorists think that normally actions that expressthese attitudes are filtered out in the processes of economic exchangeand other activities because acting on them is not usually optimal andbecause the opportunity costs of acting on these attitudes are high. But,since the opportunity costs of voting on the basis of these attitudes arenear zero, voting on the basis of sinister or simply irrational motives isin no way ruled out by the rational choice approach. Indeed, it is pre-cisely the hypothesis that voters would act on the basis of childlikemotives in the polling booth that Joseph Schumpeter made the cen-terpiece of his highly skeptical conception of democracy. Schumpeterargued that since this kind of voting would be prevalent in democraticsocieties, the role of citizens ought to be reduced to the merely formalrole of selecting elites to rule. The process of elections was for himmerely a formal device by which rulers could be chosen peacefully. Hecompletely rejected the view that the voters ought to be the ones in thedrivers seat.12

The thesis of expressive voting, as it is outlined by Brennan andHamlin, therefore involves two separate hypotheses. First, they claimthat voters do not vote strategically, or in a way that is calculated to

bring about the best outcomes. Second, they claim that voters are likelyto vote morally. The first hypothesis seems to me to be highly ques-tionable from an empirical standpoint. There is a lot of evidence that

12. See Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 3d ed. (New York:Harper & Row, 1950), p. 262.



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voters do vote strategically in presidential primaries in the United States.Voters tend to vote for candidates they think will win, and thus we seethe occurrence of bandwagon effects in presidential primaries. Thereis evidence that voters vote strategically in presidential elections whenthere are more than two candidates. And when voters vote for third-party candidates that have little chance of winning, they usually justifythis on the basis of the claim that the two main parties are not differentfrom each other.13 This kind of justification only makes sense if votersare thinking strategically. Expressive voters, as Brennan and Hamlinnote, would vote for obviously losing candidates as long as the candidatespresent something with which the voters can identify (p. 137).

Another worry about the expressive voting hypothesis is that it isunclear on this hypothesis why voters would ever go to the voting boothin the first place. That decision does have opportunity costs, and thecosts are usually thought, by rational choice theorists, to outweigh thebenefits. The benefit would be the good of expressing ones attitudes.But, first, it is unclear how this benefit is to be weighed against theopportunity costs of voting, and second, it is also unclear why voters

would choose this particular way to express themselves. On the firstpoint, the hypothesis of expressive voting is based on the thought thatthe reason why people express their attitudes in the polling booth isthat there are no opportunity costs to voting. That suggests that the

value of expressing the attitude is very low and that it could be easilyoutweighed by the opportunity costs of going to the polling booth. Ifthis is so then the hypothesis cannot explain why voters vote at all, and

since the rest of the theory cannot explain this, the whole account suffersfrom a terrible explanatory defect. The second point merely magnifiesthis problem. Brennan and Hamlin suggest that voters would vote onthe basis of a sense of civic responsibility (p. 155). But how this senseis acquired by rational agents is left entirely unexplained.

My aim is not primarily to reject the expressive voting hypothesis.It is to call into question the thesis that it is compatible with the rationalactor model or that it could be used by a rational actor model to remedysome of the defects of that model.

The third thesis is that some democratic political institutions canselect for politicians who are morally virtuous and will thereby have theeffect of encouraging virtue among some of the participants. The centralidea is that to the extent voters are voting expressively, they will vote

13. SeeSamuel Popkin, The Reasoning Voter: Communicationand Persuasionin PresidentialCampaigns(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), for the evidence. Admittedly, onthe mainstream rational choice view, it is hard to see why voters would vote at all and whythey would think strategically about their voting. So some kind of amendment to themainstream approach seems necessary here.



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for politicians who appeal to them, morally speaking. Thus a system ofpolitical representation will tend to select for morally motivated poli-ticians and will also give incentives to other politicians to be morallymotivated (Brennan and Hamlin, p. 180).

I have a fundamental worry about this approach. If voters are pri-marily self-interested they are not likely to be well informed about whatthe parties or politicians have to offer in the first place. This is a straight-forward consequence of Downss thesis of the rationality of ignorance,

which Brennan and Hamlin accept (p. 175). The thesis of expressivevoting does not deal with this issue at all. It merely says that if votershappen to be in the polling booth, they will vote in a way that expressescertain attitudes because there are no opportunity costs to doing this.But, as I pointed out above, there are opportunity costs to going to the

polling booth and there are serious opportunity costs to becoming in-formed about political parties and platforms as well as about the char-acters of politicians.

The thesis that in this context politicians motivations will be trans-lucent is simply not plausible because voters do not have the incentivesto look into their characters or their past. As a consequence, politicians

will not have incentives to be upstanding or to remain faithful to theirplatforms. They will at most have incentives to appear to be upstandingand supportive of desirable goals only for brief periods of time. Ofcourse, other elites will try to uncover the unseemly aspects of the pol-iticians activities, but to people who pay very little attention to politics,the negative campaigning will likely not offer a particularly edifying

picture of who is preferable to whom.The upshot is that, contrary to Brennan and Hamlins argument,politicians will not be chosen on the basis of their upstanding charactersor on the basis of the quality of their political platforms. They will bechosen on the basis of superficial displays of virtue and crude politicalappeals at best. And so they will have little incentive for going beyondany of this. The voters will simply not have the necessary informationto evaluate the real characters or platforms of politicians.

So it is not clear to me that the institutional mechanisms that Bren-nan and Hamlin describe will have the morally transformative effectsfor which they hope. And if they do not have the morally salutary effectshoped for, then it is unclear how they can avoid the conclusions of basicstructure determinism they desire to avoid.

CONCLUSION

I conclude that the explanatory apparatus of rational choice theoryseems to be committed to basic structure determinism and that thiscommitment is incompatible with the practical aim of rational choice



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theory. The two books reviewed in this essay are written by three of theforemost exponents of the approach and by people who have a verysophisticated appreciation of the theory, yet they seem unable to springloose from the trap of determinism laid by the theory.

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Christiano - Is Normative Rational Choice Theory Self-Defeating