U. Kelle et C. Ludemann, RATIONAL CHOICE AND THE PROBLEM OF GENERA TING BRIDGE ASSUMPTIONS, Kolner Zeitschrift fur Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 47(2), 1995, pp. 249-267
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.