APSA-CP

American Political Science Association - Comparative Politics Section

Volume 16 No. 1 Winter 2005 (link)
Includes the letter from Archie Brown bemoaning the rise of positivism and testable hypotheses as a basis for research, to the expense of other methods.
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PS Political Science and Politics

Academic Journal founded 1988

Links to issues
Volume 35 Issue 2 http://www.jstor.org/stable/i269770 (more)

Cultural Theories

Developing a theory of "irrational" actions based on cultural specificities.

Individuals may act "irrationally" in a frequent and systematic manner. Irrationality means that the action on its own is costly or harmful to the agent.

This behaviour is culturally driven. Actors will comply with culurally based irrational actions in order to fit in with a particular culture. Undertaking irrational acts is a signalling mechanism evincing loyalty to the community.

Different cultures will be able to sustain different levels of costly action. The variables that determine how costly an action the culture can sustain are:
- the benefits afforded by belonging to the community
- the cost to the community of an individual leaving or "defecting"

Testable hypothesese:
Communities that afford large benefits on their members will elicit more irrational behaviour.
Communities that are costly to leave
A community that suffers from the loss of a member may either:
- have low levels of irrational rituals in order to keep its members loyal
- or have high levels of irrational rituals in order to self-select loyal members

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