Rational Choice and Security Studies
Rigor or Rigor Mortis? Stephen M. Walt Rational Choice and Security Studies The past decade has witnessed a growing controversy over the status of formal approaches in political science, and especially the growing prominence of formal rational choice theory. Rational choice models have been an accepted part of the academic study of politics since the 1950s, but their popularity has grown signiªcantly in recent years.1 Elite academic departments are now expected to include game theorists and other formal modelers in order to be regarded as “up to date,” graduate students increasingly view the use of formal rational choice models as a prerequisite for professional advancement, and research employing rational choice methods is becoming more widespread throughout the discipline.2 Is the increased prominence of formal rational choice theory necessary, inevitable, and desirable? Advocates of formal rational choice approaches assert that these techniques are inherently more scientiªc than other analytic Stephen M. Walt is Professor of Political Science and Master of the Social Science Collegiate Division at the University of Chicago. He will join the faculty of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in July 1999. I thank the following individuals for their comments on earlier drafts of this article: Graham Allison, Robert Art, Michael Desch, George Downs, Erik Gartzke, Charles Glaser, Joseph Grieco, Robert Jervis, John Mearsheimer, Barry Posen, Jack Snyder, Stephen Van Evera, and the partici- pants at seminars at Princeton, Rutgers, Duke, and the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard. Barry O’Neill provided an exceptionally detailed and useful set of criticisms, for which I am especially grateful, and Ann Ducharme, David Edelstein, and Seth Jones were able research assistants and made valuable suggestions as well.
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