ABSTRACT

Political economy, in studies of voter and party behavior, usually refers to a specific method: the economic or rational choice method. Sometimes termed “positive political theory,” because its aim is to explain political behavior rather than tell us how we should run our political regimes (which is the job of normative political philosophy), it nevertheless has a strongly normative bent. Underlying political economy models are axiomatic principles that enable deductive model building and formally derived hypotheses. These principles – usually called “rationality assumptions” – can be considered normative desiderata for consistent behavior. They actually have very little to do with “rationality” or reasonableness as normally understood. We might be able to predict the behavior of an agent, be it a person or an institution, without considering that behavior to be in the least reasonable, prudent or sensible. Normatively an agent can be consistently irrational or unreasonable, but as long as they are consistent then their behavior can be modeled.