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Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism. By S. M. Amadae. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. xii + 401 pp. Bibliography, notes, index. Cloth, $59.00. ISBN 0-226-01653-6.
In Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism, S. M. Amadae presents a most interesting examination of the evolution of rational choice theory within economics, political science, and philosophy, and she describes as well how its emergence fits into the intellectual politics of the cold war era. Amadae has read extensively in the relevant literature and has interviewed several of the major scholars whose work she covers. The depth of reading and analysis is most impressive, and the book will be of great interest to social scientists and to historians concerned with both the aspects of intellectual change internal to the discipline and the impact of the cold war era and related external events.
The book is strongest when discussing intellectual trends in the different disciplines in its attempt to detail the relation between theory and practical political ideology. There are separate chapters on Kenneth Arrow, James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, and William Riker, as well as shorter discussions of the works of Mancur Olson, John Harsanyi, John Rawls, Amartya Sen, Anthony Downs, and Duncan Black, among others. A lurking influence on these scholars, according to the author, was the RAND Corporation, which presumably did a great deal not only to shape the political views of these scholars but also to influence the direction of government policy. RAND...