RATIONAL CHOICE AND THE PROBLEM OF GENERA TING BRIDGE ASSUMPTIONS

It has often been emphasized that the leading assumptions or the ''har d core'' of the research program of Rational Actor Theory lack empiric al content: it is not possible to derive propositions about concrete e mpirical facts from the hard core without using auxiliary assumptions about the content of actors' goals, beliefs, and restrictions. Such au xiliary assumptions have been referred to as ''bridge assumptions''. I n this paper we discuss some strategies for the construction of bridge theories. Examining Lindenberg's heuristic of social production funct ions, we argue that empirically meaningful bridge assumptions about ac tors' goals, beliefs, and restrictions cannot be derived exclusively f rom theoretical assumptions. Furthermore, researchers are seduced into employing an implicit heuristic of common-sense knowledge for constru cting bridge theories if they try to restrict themselves to deductive heuristics. In this paper a strategy is proposed as an explicit altern ative to this implicit heuristic of common-sense knowledge: the use of qualitative computer-assisted methods for constructing bridge theorie s on the basis of empirical material. Finally, examples of such a stra tegy of an empirically grounded construction of bridge theories are pr esented.