Discussion 1: Rational Choice

Comments by Evelyne Huber and Michelle Dion:

Gill (1998) develops an RC model to explain in church-state relations in Latin America. He assumes that both church and state normally prefer cooperation and will initiate conflicts only when the opportunity costs of cooperation exceeded the benefits -- the benefits being legitimacy for the government and the capacity to maximize the parishioner base for the church. The analysis proper focuses on explaining the behavior of the Catholic Church, specifically the attitudes of the national episcopates takes toward the military regimes in the 1960s and 1970s. The model predicts that the likelihood of conflict increases with religious competition and access to external funding, in the regime's decreasing popularity (1998, 70).

In the subsequent empirical analysis, though, in both the statistical model and compared it -- historical analysis, only one of these variables--religious competition --is systematically investigated. The decline of external funding comes up in the narrative to explain the general tendency of the Catholic Church in Latin America to soft-peddle it aggressive stance, beginning in the 1980s; but it is not used to explain differences among countries, as is the religious competition variable. The statistical model includes additional variables to test alternative explanations; namely poverty, repression, in the years of that bishops were appointed.

Though only religious competition appears as statistically significant, inclusion of bishops' years of appointment increases the model's explanatory power. This measure is but an inexact proxy for the influence of progressive currents within the national church. That it nonetheless improves the model lends support to previous explanations of the behavior of the Catholic Church in Latin America.

Gill's book introduces an important new variable and thereby clearly makes a major contribution by enhancing our understanding of the church's behavior. The propositions derived from the rational choice model, however, other then the impact of this one variable, are not systematically tested and empirically. Thus, the rational choice analysis per se contributes relatively little to the explanation, except perhaps by having it generated the idea about the importance of religious competition to begin with.

 
 

Viewpoints from Across the Spectrum- A Table of Contents

Anthony Gill recently received the Distinguished Teaching Award at the University of Washington.  For more about his theory see his webpage.

Past discussion (Round One) about Rational Choice can be found in the Discussion Archive which includes views of professors Edward Brett, William Marquis, and Manuel Vásquez.

Click here for following contributions:

Tim Steigenga (Political Science, Florida Atlantic University), review for Journal of Church and State

Manuel Vásquez (Wesleyan University and University of Florida) Response

Edward T. Brett (Professor of History, La Roche College, Pittsburgh, PA)

Daniel H. Levine (University of Michigan, Chair, Political Science)

Click here for following contribution:

Phillip Berryman (author of many books on religion and years of field experience in Latin America)

Click here for following contribution:

Kenneth Serbin (Assistant Professor of History and Director, Transborder Institute, University of San Diego)

Click here for following contribution:

Stathis N. Kalyvas (New York University)

Early Reviews of Rendering unto Caesar

David E. Leaman, (Northeastern Illinois University), who called the book, "a monumental achievement," despite the questions Leaman raised about the book. Leaman’s review is in Sociology of Religion 59, 4 (Winter 1998), pp. 411-412.

Kenneth Maxwell, reviewer for Foreign Affairs, says that Gill has written "an original, challenging, and controversial book." (Foreign Affairs 78, 2 [March-April 1999}, p. 149.

Resources for Debate

Michael Allingham, Rational Choice (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999)

Lawrence A. Young, ed., Rational Choice Theory and Religion: Summary and Assessment (New York: Routledge, 1997)

Milan Zairovski, "What Is Really Rational Choice," Current Sociology 47, 1 (Jan. 1999), pp. 47-113

Jeffrey Friedman, ed., The Rational Choice Controversy: Economic Models of Politics Reconsidered (New Haven, Ct., Yale University Press, 1996)

Donald P. Green and Ian Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory: A Critique of

Applications in Political Science (New Haven, Ct.: Yale University Press, 1994)

James S. Coleman and Thomas Fararo, eds., Rational Choice Theory: Advocacy and Critique Newbury Park, Ca.: Sage, 1992)

Herbert A. Simon and Claudio DeMatte, An Empirically Based Microeconomics (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1997)
 
 

Description of Rational Choice Theory:

Professor Anthony Gill Explains

    What rational choice theory attempts to explain can best be understood in relation to two other general perspectives of human behavior - cultural and psychological. The former seeks to explain human behavior based on the social values, norms and beliefs (ideologies and theologies) that people are socialized to. Psychological approaches (primarily cognitive psychology) try to understand behavior as a function of how the mind processes external information and translates it into action. Each perspective, including rational choice, is limited in what it can explain. I believe a major goal of the social sciences is to try to bridge the gap between these perspectives to provide a more complete account of individual and social behavior.

    While rational choice theory developed from the study of microeconomics, it should not be associated exclusively with fiduciary gain (i.e., money). Money has been a prime focus of economics largely because it is the best empirical measure economists have had for determining "utility." But people can seek to maximize non-fiduciary goals such as leisure, reputation and even love. Likewise, although rational choice theorists assume that people are self-interested utility maximizers, this does not imply that people are "greedy." Rather, rational choice only states that people will try to maximize their utility (however defined) in a world of scarce resources. Consider the proverbial "Good Samaritan." While pure of heart and concerned with strictly altruistic goals, the Good Samaritan nonetheless is constrained by limited time, energy and resources to help the poor. For simplicity sake, we can assume that this Good Samaritan has two options before him/her. The first (policy A) allows him/her to raise quadruple the living standards of 10 poor people. The second (policy B) provides him/her to double the living standards of 100 poor people. How to choose between policy A or B is an economic decision, and, in this case, is one that has very altruistic goals. Indeed, this is often the decision that the most honorable charities face on a daily basis.

    But can rational choice apply to religion and religious behavior? After all, it is often taken as given that religion is an inherently "non-rational" form of knowledge; spiritual knowledge (and the action it is based upon) relies on faith that something is true rather than cost-benefit calculation, empirical verification or information updating - all hallmarks of the "rational choice" process. In part, this is true and points to one of the limits of rational choice theory. Rational choice does not try to explain why people have certain spiritual beliefs (although "Pascal's wager" is an attempt to do this - see also John Durkin and Andrew Greeley's 1991 article in Rationality and Society). However, given a certain set of spiritual beliefs (e.g., Catholicism), rational choice observes that people acting on religious motivations (e.g., evangelize, help the poor, seek salvation) still live in a world of scarcity and must make tough decisions on how best to achieve their goals. Individual parishioners must make choices about how much time to devote to church activities versus individual worship, and how much money to donate. Economist Larry Iannaccone has written extensively on this topic (see his 1990 article in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion). Similarly, clergy must make decisions on how best to serve their parishioners based on limited budgets. In large part, this is what my book - Rendering Unto Caesar - is about. A Catholic Church with limited resources (most notably a dearth of priests) must make decisions on how to allocate those resources under two different circumstances: 1) when the Church is a monopoly; and 2) when the Church faces pluralism, or religious competition. These choices, I argue, have political consequences. 

    All told, the rational choice approach to studying religious actors and institutions need not be one that sterilizes spirituality from religion. Indeed, my own personal spirituality has grown stronger over the course of my fieldwork in Latin America. I have had the great pleasure to talk to both Catholics and Protestants who are truly honorable people whose main motivation has been to serve God. Nonetheless, these individuals have had to make tough choices along the way and they have always tried to make choices that bring about the most amount of benefit to the people surrounding them. Understanding these choices is well within the purview of rational choice theory.
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