Choosing an Identity A General Model of Preference and Belief Formation Sun-Ki Chai Ann Arbor Copyright c by the University of Michigan 1999 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America ∞ Printed on acid-free paper 2002 2001 2000 1999 4 3 2 1 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chai, Sun-Ki Choosing an identity: a general theory of preference and belief formation /Sun-Ki Chai p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-471-?????-? (alk. paper) —ISBN 0-471-?????-? (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Social theory. Rational Choice. 2. Political development. Comparative. 3. Culture. Values and beliefs. I. Chai, Sun-Ki. II. Title. LOC Call No. 1999 Dewey Call No. 99-????? CIP For my family Contents Preface vi 1. The Success and Failure of Rational Choice 1 The Assumptions of the Rational Choice Approach 5 The Strengths of Conventional Rational Choice 8 The Weaknesses of Conventional Rational Choice 12 The Chapter Structure of This Book 19 2. Alternatives to Conventional Rational Choice: A Survey 24 Structural Assumptions and Models 25 Assumptions about Decision Making 31 Preference and Belief Assumptions 59 Conclusion 77 3. A General Model of Preference and Belief Formation 81 An Identity Coherence Model of Preference and Belief Formation 82 Assumptions of the Model 83 Basic Implications of the Model 97 Preference and Belief Change 100 Rewards and Preference and Belief Change 105 Implications for Dynamic Choice 111 Implications for Collective Choice 116 Plan for the Following Chapters 124 Proofs of Theorems 124 4. Ideology Formation and Policy Choice in Ex-Colonies 129 Theories of Policy Formation 130 The Conventional Model of the State 133 Variations on the Conventional Model of the State 138 vii An Identity Formation Theory of Oppositional Ideology Formation and Policy 148 A Statistical Analysis of Economic Intervention 163 Conclusion 172 5. The Origins of Ethnic Identity and Collective Action 174 Rationalist Theories of Ethnic Collective Action 175 A Coherence-Rational Choice Theory of Ethnic Group Formation 190 Case Studies 203 Conclusion 211 6. Structural Change, Cultural Change, and Civic Violence 213 Theories of Tradition and Modernity 215 An Coherence Rational Choice Theory of Structural Change, Altruism, and Collective Action 228 Conclusion 241 7. Conclusion 242 Modifying the Assumptions of the Model 242 Justifications for the Coherence Model 246 Summing Up 254 References 256 viii Preface This book provides a general model of preference and belief formation, integrating it with a model of rationality to generate a unified model of preferences, beliefs, and actions. The basic concept behind the model is one that appears under a variety of guises, depending on the social science literature from which it is taken: regret, dissonance, and coherence to name but a few. I argue that there is an essential theoretical unity to these concepts and that, properly defined and constrained, they can form the basis of a general positive model with implications not only for rational choice theories, but also for issues of personal identity and culture. I also argue that identity and culture are not antithetical to rationality but instead are essential to its having any meaning. The central premise of the model is that individuals act to optimize their preferences and beliefs within a set of phenomenological constraints, analogously to the way that they act to optimize actions within a perceived set of structural constraints. Indeed, optimization is seen to occur jointly across preferences, beliefs, and actions, as individuals seek to construct an optimal life plan that constitutes their identities. By providing this model, I hope to address some the major problems that have plagued attempts to extend the boundaries of the rational choice approach: (1) the ability to make determinate predictions and (2) the ability to make the transition from micro to macrolevel explanation. The model is examined in an extended fashion through three empirical studies that address major unresolved issues in the comparative study of long-term development. While writing this book, I have incurred debts to a wide range of teachers and colleagues. This book was originally my dissertation at the Stanford poltical science department, and I would like to thank the members of my dissertation committee: my adviser Robert Packenham, Gabriel A. Almond, and John Ferejohn. I would also like to thank the people from whom I received regular comments and advice during various stages of writing: David Abernethy, Michael Hechter, James G. March, and the late Aaron Wildavsky. I would also like to thank those who provided helpful comments on drafts of chapters, including George A. Akerlof, Jonathan Bendor, Richard Brody, Dennis Chong, William Dixon, Geoffrey Garrett, Kurt Gaubatz, David Grusky, Ted R. Gurr, Dwight Hahn, Satoshi Kanazawa, Sunhyuk Kim, Masaru Kohno, Stephen D. Krasner, David Laitin, Hye-ryeon Lee, Linda D. Molm, Susan Olzak, Kenneth Organski, Bertrand Roehner, Tibor Scitovsky, Paul M. Sniderman, the late Amos Tversky, and Barry R. Weingast. I apologize to anyone whose name I have left out inadvertedly. I also would like to thank the members of the Pizza and Politics and the Brown Bag Dissertation Writers groups at Stanford for risking indigestion on several presentations of my main ideas. I would also like to thank the University of Arizona sociology department for being ecumenical enough to hire a graduate from another discipline. Thanks also ix Preface x to research assistants Jason Miller and Kristi Clark for help with copyediting the document. I would like express appreciation to everyone at the University of Michigan Press, including the successive politics editors: Malcolm Litchfield, Charles T. Myers, Jeremy Shine as well as their staff, for their admirable patience, as well as to two anonymous reviewers and one anonymous member of the executive committee for their detailed comments. Along with the usual thanks, I would also like to offer some apologies. First of all, to the people at Michigan, who were promised a completed manuscript by August 1995. This clearly did not happen! Sorry for the long wait, and I hope that the resulting improvements in the text at least partly compensate for it. I should also acknowledge my ebtedness to the text-processing language Plain TEX, which was used to typeset this document, and the programming languages Snobol4 and Icon, which were used to write scripts for converting the citations, generating the index, and dealing with other last-minute changes of mind on formatting. Moreover, as an aside to those scholars whose theories are discussed and compared in this book: the nature of my topic has meant that I have had to skate over an extremely wide range of literature in a relatively short space. Hence, the dangers of superficiality or misrepresentation are omnipresent. Despite my best efforts, I am sure I have not always managed to avoid such dangers. I should also emphasize that each theory is evaluated in light of its applicability to the particular issue being discussed in the relevant chapter, not with regard to its overall usefulness, and I hope my comments will be taken in that light. Nonetheless, to those whose theories I have wronged in some fashion, I offer apologies in advance. Finally, I would like to apologize to my wife, Hye-ryeon Lee, and my son, Alex, for seeming to walk around in a fog at times while I was writing the book. Chapter 1 The Success and Failure of Rational Choice The rational choice approach, despite widespread criticism, has reached a point of unrivaled prominence among general theoretical approaches for explaining human action. This prominence extends across the entire range of social sciences. In economics, rational choice remains unchallenged as the dominant, if not defining, theoretical paradigm, and is sometimes referred to simply as the “economic approach .”1 In political science, largely under auspices of the public choice school, the rational choice approach has grown to the point where it has more adherents than any other, and its threatened dominance has set off an intense debate that has polarized the discipline.2 In psychology, rational choice can claim close ties to a wide variety of theories located under the broad rubric of expectancy-value analysis.3 Furthermore, the rapidly-growing subfield of decision theory, while often rejecting the economist’s optimizing version of rational choice, uses it as the standard against which to compare its own bounded rational choice models.4 In sociology, rational choice has risen from obscurity to become a major theoretical approach in both Europe and the United States, benefiting from the strong support of some the most prominent names in the discipline.5 While anthropology is less interested than other social science disciplines in grand theories, rational choice has nonetheless been at the center of perhaps the main ongoing theoretical debate in cultural and social anthropology, that over whether interpretation of unfamiliar cultural practices should always proceed on the assumption that participants in such practices are rational.6 Furthermore, it could 1 See, for instance, Becker 1976b; Monroe 1991; Radnitzky and Bernholz 1987; Radnitzky 1992. 2 Numerous books have been written on the topic of rational choice theory and political science, many of which are cited later in this chapter. For a journalist’s overview of this intradisciplinary strife, see Cushman 1994. 3 Although the exact boundaries of expectancy-value analysis are open to debate, it is usually defined as encompassing theories in which action is based on the value placed on different outcomes and the perceived effect of each alternative in achieving these outcomes. These include achievement motivation theory, some versions of social learning theory, some versions of decision theory, the theory of reasoned action, field theory, and purposive behavior theory.