Rational Choice

Rational choice's emergence within sociology began with the pioneering work of James Coleman in the 1960s. Drawing on the “purposive action framework” (see The Mathematics of Collective Action, 1973), he proposed an analysis of collective action that was eventually extended into analyses of social norms, marriage markets, status systems, and educational attainment (Foundations of Social Theory, 1990). His work established the theme that continued to define rational choice sociology, a focus on explaining macro-social phenomena in ways grounded in micro-social choices of social actors. As thus conceived, rational choice has two essential features. The first is a view of social action as purposive; thus behavior is oriented by a system of values, aims, or goals. The second is a commitment to some form of methodological individualism wherein social structures and institutions are viewed as the products of social action.

Coleman's approach to rational choice sociology drew directly on neoclassical economic theory. He viewed a wide range of phenomena in market terms. For example, a marriage system can be viewed as a market for mates in which those with highly valued attributes have the greatest value in the marriage market. Similarly, a status system can be viewed as a market for access to individuals with highly valued attributes. High-status people gravitate toward one another, thereby defining the upper reaches of the stratification system, and lower-status people have no choice but to settle for one another and thereby define the lower levels. This emphasis on market models carried over to Coleman's proposals for institutional design. The problem he addressed was the diminishing portion of the gross domestic product going to homes with children resulting from the increasing proportion of single-parent households. He proposed resolving this problem by creating a micromarket in child care services, in which families would earn governmental payments based on to their ability to raise effectively functioning children. The intended effect was to strengthen the incentives for families to invest in their children while also providing them with the resources to do so. Therefore, one form of market failure—a failure of the marriage market to provide adequately for the needs of children—was to be resolved through creating a secondary market. This approach resembles the economic approach to institutional design. For example, the failure of the mortgage market that contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s led to the creation of a governmentally administered secondary mortgage market.

During this early phase, contributions to rational choice grew quietly, with contributions from a growing number of scholars. These include Anthony Oberschall's (1973) analyses of social movements, Heckathorn's (1983) analyses of [Page 621]bargaining and networks of collective action, Pamela Oliver's (1980) work on the organizational processes underlying collective action, Karl-Dieter Opp's (1982) analyses of norms and social movements, and Lindenberg's studies of sharing groups (1982). While sharing Coleman's focus on explaining macro-social phenomena in ways grounded in micro-social choices of social actors, these works were grounded, not in microeconomic theory but, rather, either in various forms of social psychology, which had long been dominated by rational choice perspectives, or in game theory.

...