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The Rational Choice Theory

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The etymological origin of the word ‘rational’ can be traced back to the late 14th century from the Latin word rationalis which means ‘of belonging to reason or reasonable’. Rationality became the key component in the analysis of human nature and its relation with the society in the following centuries. There were several interpretations of the idea of ‘rationality’ by theorists like Weber and Parsons who said that human action involved both rational and non-rational elements. In the late 20th century, the debates on rationality entered the field of political analysis. Rational choice theory became one of the most dominant approaches of political science. Moving away from the focus on history and culture, rational choice theory focused on the …show more content…

Rationality, according to the theory, means a property of patterns of choices. The basic premise of the modeling under rational choice theory is that individual choices are driven by rationality which means each individual chooses the best action in accordance with his preferences and within the constraints presented by the situation. Given that individuals cannot opt for all the choices presented to them, they are required to make choices which can help them achieve their goals and or at least the means thereof. Therefore the rational choice theory holds that individuals must anticipate the outcomes of alternative courses of action and calculate that which will be best for them. Rational individuals choose the alternative that is likely to give them the greatest …show more content…

The model of individual rationality plays an important role in public policy formulation. Given that rational choice theory propagates the individuals making rational decision, public policy based on rational choice is operated through instruments like incentives and sanctions on the assumption that preferences are determined exogenously and that individual will change its behavior according to its calculation of profit. The policy instruments provide the criticism for the theory

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Robert J. Hoshowsky wrote The Last to Die which summarizes the lives of Ronald Turpin and Arthur Lucas, who were the last two people to die due to capital punishment in Canada. Certain situations in Ronald Turpin’s life led him to commit a crime resulting in the use of capital punishment. Looking into his criminal lifestyle, the rational choice theory can explain some of the actions he felt he had to take and his role in society. Also, using the social learning theory can explain where he learned these behaviours from. Using these theory helps to explain Ronald’s criminal lifestyle and help people understand why he did what he did, although there are a few theories that can relate to Ronald’s lifestyle.

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Rational choice theory also stipulates that all complex social phenomena are driven by individual human actions. It focuses on the choice to engage in crime. We must keep in mind bounded rationality in order to understand Rationality is constrained by the limits of time and ability and the availability of relevant information (Cullen, 2014 pg 439). You can easily link Rational Choice theory to the film Scarface. In this film Tony Montana (Al Pacino) calculates the pleasure and benefits he can obtain if he becomes a cocaine distributer.

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A crime that recently happened was the Marrisa Alexander case. A mother of 3 sentence to 20 years in prison for firing a warning shot at her abusive husband. Can we use rational choice theory to state that Marrisa Alexander, was a delinquent who committed this crime with all understanding of the law and knowledge of penalty? Physical and verbal abuse can blur the line for a victim that rational thinking may sometimes become and irrational. We will review if Ms. Alexander case, to better understand was this crime committed by a criminal or someone under duress, was rationality used during this incident, and was all preventive measures taken to prevent this crime or was this a case where the law provided no justice for the victim.

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Rational behavior is not easy to achieve but it is possible. According to Charles Elder and Roger Cobb, “Rationality implies that political actions and evaluations are the product of consistent preferences, logical analysis, and abundant [unbiased] information. Irrationality, on the other hand presupposes that political actions and reactions are based on emotional impulses and blind prejudices that defy logic and that are insensitive to fact.” Elder and Cobb both compared the understanding of rational behavior and irrational behavior. Human beings are basically non-rational people.

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Hello Village of Ridgewood Council Members. We are from Dr. Bernardo’s philosophy honors class at Ridgewood High School and are here to discuss the issue of rationality that has been affecting this town for the past few years. People have not been acting in a way that would be considered rational and so we have put together guidelines for people of the town to follow in order to live their lives more rationally. Rationality is acting according to the truth, so our presentation has a focus on getting people to act according to the truth.

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According to Allison and Zelikow admit the deviancy saying “characterization of the rational actor’s choice in a world of uncertainty about estimated consequences of options requires further information or assumptions about the actors’ attitude toward risk.” Allison justifies the model saying people must use the Rational Actor Paradigm. It uses a “systematic statement of the basic assumptions, concepts, and propositions employed in the basic school of analysis”. In our example, the only known objective was to agree upon that a decision of some kind had to be made. The options on the table were increase law enforcement, create exclusion zones, mass deportation, internment, extermination, propaganda, encourage loyalty, full scale evacuation or simply do nothing.

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Our rationality and reason give us the ability to distinguish between good and bad, just and unjust, and to assess whether or not we are good people. It also gives us the capability to understand and perform higher intellectual activities. The three alternatives can also be said to be split into 2 categories, the rational part of the soul and the non-rational part of the soul. The life of growth and perception falls

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Overall, the rational is but an attempt to define the undefinable. To understand Otto’s rejection of the rational, the rational must be understood. “Rational,” in The Idea of the Holy, refers to the conceptualization of religion and the divine itself. Otto’s basic definition of the rational stems from the establishment and application of concepts evidenced in “they can be grasped by the intellect; they can be analyzed by thought; they even admit of definition. An object that can thus be thought conceptually may be termed rational” (Otto, 1).

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Why do people commit crimes? What goes through their minds before they actually commit a crime? These are questions asked from society to criminologist every time one decides they want to commit a crime. Criminologists has given us different crime causations, theories, to explain the answer to these questions. A theory is a speculation about how phenomena, behavior, or process are caused and what takes place after the cause is determined (Anderson, 2015).

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The first great-war shattered the human mind so profound that out of its aftermaths’ emerged a fresh discipline (in 1919 at the University of Whales known to us as International Relations) proposed to prevent war. “It was deemed by the scholars that the study of International Politics shall find the root cause of the worlds political problems and put forward solutions to help politicians solve them” (Baylis 2014:03). International Relations happened to play the role of a ‘correcting-mechanism’ restoring the world order of peace and amity by efforting at its best to maintain the worlds’ status quo. However with the emergence of a second world war much more massive that the first put at stake all the values of that young discipline of IR. The

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