"As always, Elster has produced an analysis that is conspicuous for its elegance....Seldom can Tocqueville have been put through such a rigorous intellectual mincer." Rudolf Klein, Times Literary Supplement

This provocative new textbook takes up and develops the themes of rationality and irrationality in Jon Elster's earlier work. Its purposes are threefold. First, Elster shows how belief and preference formation in the realm of politics are shaped by social and political institutions. Second, he argues for an important distinction in the social sciences between mechanisms and theories. Third, he illustrates those general principles of political psychology through readings of three outstanding political psychologists: the French classical historian, Paul Veyne; the Soviet dissident writer, Alexander Zinoviev; the great French political theorist, Alexis de Tocqueville.
Read more
This textbook takes up and develops the themes of rationality and irrationality in Jon Elster's earlier work.
Abbreviations; Preface; Introduction: why political psychology?; 1. A historian and the irrational: a reading of Bread and Circuses; 2. Internal and external negation: an essay in Ibanskian sociology; 3. Tocqueville's psychology I; 4. Tocqueville's psychology II; References; Index.
Read more
This provocative textbook takes up and develops the themes of rationality and irrationality in Jon Elster's earlier work.

Product details

ISBN
9780521422864
Published
1993-01-29
Publisher
Vendor
Cambridge University Press
Weight
280 gr
Height
216 mm
Width
140 mm
Thickness
13 mm
Age
P, U, 06, 05
Language
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Number of pages
216

Author