STATISTICAL POLITICAL-PHILOSOPHY AND POSITIVE POLITICAL-THEORY

Green and Shapiro's tour de force fails as a convincing critique of ra tional choice applications in political science because it locks itsel f into a statistical form of assessment. Rather than seeing the constr uctive side of rational choice theory, both as an engine of theoretica l development and as a source of non-obvious empirical insights about politics, Green and Shapiro depart from the procedure in most sciences , comparing rational choice against an ideal rather than some concrete alternative. Finally, they fail to note the recent emphasis on sophis ticated empirical testing of rational choice hypotheses.