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What Is a Rational Choice?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
Extract
“One can hardly judge the honesty and beauty of an action by its utility.”
Montaigne, Essays, III, 1.“Those who choose well are those who have the right spirit; those who take the bad part are those who have the false spirit; this is the first and the most important difference which one can put among the qualities of the spirit of men.”
La Logique de Port-Royal, First part.For some years, much effort has been deployed in several countries to put at the disposition of the responsible authorities a presentation as explicit as possible of the costs and advantages which would proceed from the different courses of action among which they have to choose. In the United States this is called “Planning-Programming-Budgeting System” (or PPBS), in France “Rationalisation des Choix Budgétaires” (or RCB), in England “Output Budgeting”.
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- Copyright © 1970 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 To take a simple example, to "sub-optimize" consists of choosing the most effective method to learn a profession which in a short time will no longer be practised.
2 " It would be very pleasant for man to set up an ordered table of values. Historic or individual conflicts, which all bear on questions of precedence, would be resolved, at least on paper, which is not to be overlooked. Unfortunately almost anybody is in agreement on the extreme diffculty of establishing such a hierarchy, or order, and many doubt that the question of hierarchy has a sense," R. Ruyer, Le Monde des valeurs (Aubier, 1948), p. 103.
3 Ends are not the objectives of political activity, justly wrote Julien Freund, but "they order activity, orient it, and give it meaning. They give it a systematic character, a unity of vision so that political operations are no longer simply an aggregate of actions at the service of the single specific end of politics, but also at the service of man." (Qu'est-ce que la politique?, Le Seuil, p. 101).
4 See for example an article by James R. Schlesinger, " Systems Analysis and the Political Process " (Journal of Law and Economics, vol. XI, 1968), and that of A. Wildawski, " The Political Economy of Efficiency" (Public Administration Review, December 1966), which gives as examples of "political costs" the loss of support of an important political group or the risk of not being reelected. Let us note that there is an assumption underlying this separation between politics and expert knowledge, which is that the mastery of the policy sciences is not the absolute weapon in the political arena: the " generalist " will not replace the general even if he is a better systems analyst…
5 A point which I have treated in "Les fins et les moyens," Critique, April 1969.
6 This is nothing less than the problem of the aggregation and the balancing of heterogeneous ends…
7 Cf. M. Olson, "Rapport social, indicateurs sociaux, comptes sociaux," Analyse et Prévision, February 1969, and B. Cazes, "Vers une nouvelle arithmétique sociale," Le Figaro, March 30-31, 1969.
8 H. Perloff made some interesting proposals on that subject in his article "A Framework for dealing with the Urban Environment," in H. Perloff, ed., The Quality of the Urban Environment, Johns Hopkins Press, 1969.
9 The pioneer work is that edited by R. Bauer, Social Indicators (M.I.T. Press), to which must be added besides the references of note 7; B. Gross, The State of the Nation (Tavistock); the two numbers of Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Sciences, May and September 1967, the hearings held by Senator Mondale on his project to create a social accounts system (U.S. Government Printing Office) and the report of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Toward a Social Report (U. S. Government Printing Office, 1969).
10 See his demonstration in The Public Administration Review, March-April 1969, p. 181.
11 Criteria for Evaluation in Planning State and Local Programs (U. S. Government Printing Office, 1967).
12 Cf. for example D. Bertaux, "Sur l'analyse des tables de mobilité sociale," Revue Française de Sociologie, October-December 1969.
13 "Social Goals as an Aspect of Planning" (reprinted in the hearings of Senator Mondale, ref. 9).
14 I point out only as a reminder the divergencies of terminology which one observes in specialist literature; French authors generally tend to reserve the word criterion to designate every rule possessing a degree of generality proper to make of it an instrument of comparison between solutions or policies with dissimilar results.
15 Or, alternatively, maximization of benefit for a predetermined ceiling of resources.
16 In his book Efficiency in Government through Systems Analysis (Wiley, 1958), p. 63.
17 Cf. all the critiques against "fetishism of GNP" which B. Lassudrie-Duchêne refers to in his article "Economic Growth and Its Price," Diogenes, Winter 1966.
18 See for example "A Better Life in an Affluent Society," Diogenes, Spring 1961 reprinted in his latest book Arcadie (Ed. Sedeis, 1969).
19 Excellently analyzed in the book published under this title by A. Wolfesperger (PUF, 1969).
20 In fact, an eminent specialist such as Y. Dror considers that the science of public decision (policy science) should not hold the existing structures of power for intangibles, but should reexamine them in function of the interest of the whole social system (cf. the review of his latest book, Public Policy-Making Reexamined, by B. de Jouvenel, Analyse et Prévision, Fe bruary 1970).