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Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification
By Timur Kuran. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 423 pages, $45.00
This book deals with the apparently paradoxical condition that under some conditions individuals act in one manner, yet feel the opposite. The condition gives rise to a series of subsidiary questions. What are the causes of preference falsification? Can preference falsification be analytically described or modeled? What are its consequences?
Written by an economist, Professor Timur Kuran of University of Southern California, and aimed especially at those interested in extending the reach of the analytical tools of public choice economics, Private Truths, Public Lies, is of considerable interest to non-economic social scientists, despite its many difficulties, ambiguities, and problems.
Kuran presents his argument in four parts which are interwoven with three case studies describing the existence and consequences of preference falsification. This makes the treatment dense and difficult to follow. However, the effort is not without its rewards. Kuran discusses preference falsification proper in the first six chapters of the book's nineteen. This is followed by an introduction to Kuran's three case studies: 1) the persistence and fall of communism, 2) the persistence of the Indian caste system, and 3) the persistence of affirmative action policies in the face of public disaffection.
The third part of Private Truths, Public Lies takes up the theme of distorted knowledge which is then applied to each of the cases discussed earlier. The fourth and last part of the work discusses an interesting consequence of preference falsification. It is that largescale unexpected changes in institutional arrangements, which are often extremely difficult to predict in advance, can be understood by understanding the mechanism of preference falsification. Finally, the concluding chapter makes perceptive observations about the difficulties preference falsification poses for social science analysis.
While the case studies are drawn entirely from secondary materials, they are often riveting. Each is related to both preference falsification and to the spread of "false knowledge." Although it is possible to skip the analytical material and read the case studies alone, which some readers may find easier, Kuran's analytical apparatus deserves consideration.
According to Kuran, preference falsification is aimed at manipulating the perceptions others hold about one's own motives or dispositions (p. 4). It...