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Is Normative Rational Choice Theory Self‐Defeating?*

Rational choice approaches to politics have, in the main, been concerned to pursue two principal aims. First, they attempt to explain and predict the operation of economic and political institutional structures on the basis of a conception of human beings as homo economicus. Public choice theory, game theory, neoclassical economic theory, law and economics, and some of social choice theory all share this explanatory aim. Second, rational choice theories attempt to justify and criticize institutional structures by showing that when in place, the institutions are likely to bring about outcomes that are for the common good or not, under the assumption that they operate in the way that the explanatory theory says they do. This evaluation and justification are done with an eye to justifying policy proposals for the reform of those institutions and in some cases even the total transformation of economic and political institutions. This is the practical aim of rational choice theory. In the pursuit of the explanatory and practical aims, these approaches conceive of rational agents as pursuing their own interests understood broadly in conflictual terms (that is where the interests are not inherently harmonious). The rational choice theorist then argues in favor