An original account, drawing on both history and social science, of the causes and consequences of the American Revolution With America before 1787, Jon Elster offers the second volume of a projected trilogy that examines the emergence of constitutional politics in France and America. Here, he explores the increasingly uneasy relations between Britain and its American colonies and the social movements through which the thirteen colonies overcame their seemingly deep internal antagonisms. Elster documents the importance of the radical uncertainty about their opponents that characterized both British and American elites and reveals the often neglected force of enthusiasm, and of emotions more generally, in shaping beliefs and in motivating actions. He provides the first detailed examinations of “divide and rule” as a strategy used on both sides of the Atlantic and of the rise and fall of collective action movements among the Americans. Elster also explains how the gradual undermining in America of the British imperial system took its toll on transatlantic relations and describes how state governments and the American Confederation made crucial institutional decisions that informed and constrained the making of the Constitution. Drawing on a wide range of historical sources and on theories of modern social science, Elster brings together two fields of scholarship in innovative and original ways. The result is a unique synthesis that yields new insights into some of the most important events in modern history.

A masterful new account of old regime France by one of the world's most prominent political philosophers France before 1789 traces the historical origins of France's National Constituent Assembly of 1789, providing a vivid portrait of the ancien regime and its complex social system in the decades before the French Revolution. Jon Elster writes in the spirit of Alexis de Tocqueville, who described this tumultuous era with an eye toward individual and group psychology and the functioning of institutions. Whereas Tocqueville saw the old regime as a breeding ground for revolution, Elster, more specifically, identifies the rural and urban conflicts that fueled the constitution-making process from 1789 to 1791. He presents a new approach to history writing, one that supplements the historian's craft with the tools and insights of modern social science. Elster draws on important French and Anglo-American scholarship as well as a treasure trove of historical evidence from the period, such as the Memoirs of Saint-Simon, the letters of Madame de Sevigne, the journals of the lawyer Barbier and the bookseller Hardy, the Remonstrances of Malesherbes, and La Bruyere's maxims. Masterfully written and unparalleled in scope, France before 1789 is the first volume of a trilogy that promises to transform our understanding of constitution making in the eighteenth century. Volume 2 will look at revolutionary America in the years leading up to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 while the third volume will examine all facets of the French and American assemblies, from how they elected their delegates and organized their proceedings to how they addressed issues of separation of powers and representation.

A masterful new account of old regime France by one of the world's most prominent political philosophers France before 1789 traces the historical origins of France's National Constituent Assembly of 1789, providing a vivid portrait of the ancien regime and its complex social system in the decades before the French Revolution. Jon Elster writes in the spirit of Alexis de Tocqueville, who described this tumultuous era with an eye toward individual and group psychology and the functioning of institutions. Whereas Tocqueville saw the old regime as a breeding ground for revolution, Elster, more specifically, identifies the rural and urban conflicts that fueled the constitution-making process from 1789 to 1791. He presents a new approach to history writing, one that supplements the historian's craft with the tools and insights of modern social science. Elster draws on important French and Anglo-American scholarship as well as a treasure trove of historical evidence from the period, such as the Memoirs of Saint-Simon, the letters of Madame de Sevigne, the journals of the lawyer Barbier and the bookseller Hardy, the Remonstrances of Malesherbes, and La Bruyere's maxims. Masterfully written and unparalleled in scope, France before 1789 is the first volume of a trilogy that promises to transform our understanding of constitution making in the eighteenth century. Volume 2 will look at revolutionary America in the years leading up to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 while the third volume will examine all facets of the French and American assemblies, from how they elected their delegates and organized their proceedings to how they addressed issues of separation of powers and representation.

All social scientists, despite their differences on many issues, ask causal questions about the world. In this anthology, Andrew P. Vayda and Bradley B. Walters set forth strategy and methods to answer those questions. The selected readings, all illuminating causal explanation for social scientists, are not only by anthropologists, sociologists, economists, and human ecologists but also by philosophers, biologists, psychologists, historians, and specialists in other fields. The essays will appeal to those doing applied research on practical problems as well as those seeking mainly to satisfy their curiosity about the causes of whatever events or types of events interest them.

The book proposes a new interpretation of Alexis de Tocqueville that views him first and foremost as a social scientist rather than as a political theorist. Drawing on his earlier work on the explanation of social behavior, Elster argues that Tocqueville's main claim to our attention today rests on the large number of exportable causal mechanisms to be found in his work, many of which are still worthy of further exploration. Elster proposes a novel reading of Democracy in America in which the key explanatory variable is the rapid economic and political turnover rather than equality of wealth at any given point in time. He also offers a reading of The Ancien Regime and the Revolution as grounded in the psychological relations among the peasantry, the bourgeoisie, and the nobility. Consistently going beyond exegetical commentary, he argues that Tocqueville is eminently worth reading today for his substantive and methodological insights.

One of the world's most important political philosophers, Jon Elster is a leading thinker on reason and rationality and their roles in politics and public life. In this short book, he crystallizes and advances his work, bridging the gap between philosophers who use the idea of reason to assess human behavior from a normative point of view and social scientists who use the idea of rationality to explain behavior. In place of these approaches, Elster proposes a unified conceptual framework for the study of behavior.

Drawing on classical moralists as well as modern scholarship, and using a wealth of historical and contemporary illustrations, "Reason and Rationality" marks a new development in Elster's thinking while at the same time providing a brief, elegant, and accessible introduction to his work.

Emotion and addiction lie on a continuum between simple visceral drives such as hunger, thirst, and sexual desire at one end and calm, rational decision making at the other. Although emotion and addiction involve visceral motivation, they are also closely linked to cognition and culture. They thus provide the ideal vehicle for Jon Elster's study of the interrelation between three explanatory approaches to behavior: neurobiology, culture, and choice.

The book is organized around parallel analyses of emotion and addiction in order to bring out similarities as well as differences. Elster's study sheds fresh light on the generation of human behavior, ultimately revealing how cognition, choice, and rationality are undermined by the physical processes that underlie strong emotions and cravings. This book will be of particular interest to those studying the variety of human motivations who are dissatisfied with the prevailing reductionisms.

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This book is intended as an introductory survey of the philosophy of the social sciences. It is essentially a work of exposition that offers a tool box of mechanisms--nuts and bolts, cogs and wheels--that can be used to explain complex social phenomena. Within a brief compass, Jon Elster covers a vast range of topics. His point of departure is the conflict we all face between our desires and our opportunities. How can rational choice theory help us understand our motivation and behavior? More significantly, what happens when the theory breaks down but we still cleave to a belief in the power of the rational? Elster describes the fascinating range of forms of irrationality--wishful thinking, the phenomenon of sour grapes, discounting the future in non-cooperative behavior. He shows how these issues bear directly on our lives in such concrete situations as wage bargaining, economic cartels, political strikes, voting in elections, and court decisions involving child custody.

The essays in this provocative collection survey and assess institutional arrangements that offer possible alternatives to capitalism as it exists today. The point of departure agreed upon by the contributors is that on the one hand, capitalism produces unemployment, a lack of autonomy in the workplace, and massive income inequalities; while on the other, central socialist planning is characterized by underemployment, inefficiency, and bureaucracy. In Part I of the volume, various alternatives are proposed: profit-sharing systems, capitalism combined with some central planning, worker-owned firms in a market economy into a centrally planned economy, as has occurred recently in Hungary. Part II provides a theoretical analysis and assessment of these systems. This book is the first to cover such a wide range of subjects as central planning, market socialism, and profit sharing. It will prove indispensable to political and social scientists, and economists.

In this new edition of his critically acclaimed book, Jon Elster examines the nature of social behavior, proposing choice as the central concept of the social sciences. Extensively revised throughout, the book offers an overview of key explanatory mechanisms, drawing on many case studies and experiments to explore the nature of explanation in the social sciences; an analysis of the mental states - beliefs, desires, and emotions - that are precursors to action; a systematic comparison of rational-choice models of behavior with alternative accounts, and a review of mechanisms of social interaction ranging from strategic behavior to collective decision making. A wholly new chapter includes an exploration of classical moralists and Proust in charting mental mechanisms operating 'behind the back' of the agent, and a new conclusion points to the pitfalls and fallacies in current ways of doing social science, proposing guidelines for more modest and more robust procedures.

In this new edition of his critically acclaimed book, Jon Elster examines the nature of social behavior, proposing choice as the central concept of the social sciences. Extensively revised throughout, the book offers an overview of key explanatory mechanisms, drawing on many case studies and experiments to explore the nature of explanation in the social sciences; an analysis of the mental states - beliefs, desires, and emotions - that are precursors to action; a systematic comparison of rational-choice models of behavior with alternative accounts, and a review of mechanisms of social interaction ranging from strategic behavior to collective decision making. A wholly new chapter includes an exploration of classical moralists and Proust in charting mental mechanisms operating 'behind the back' of the agent, and a new conclusion points to the pitfalls and fallacies in current ways of doing social science, proposing guidelines for more modest and more robust procedures.

This new translation of an undisputed classic aims to be both accurate and readable. Tocqueville's subtlety of style and profundity of thought offer a challenge to readers as well as to translators. As both a Tocqueville scholar and an award-winning translator, Arthur Goldhammer is uniquely qualified for the task. In his Introduction, Jon Elster draws on his recent work to lay out the structure of Tocqueville's argument. Readers will appreciate The Ancien Regime and the French Revolution for its sense of irony as well as tragedy, for its deep insights into political psychology, and for its impassioned defense of liberty.

In the spirit of Jeremy Bentham's Political Tactics, this volume offers the first comprehensive discussion of the effects of secrecy and publicity on debates and votes in committees and assemblies. The contributors - sociologists, political scientists, historians, legal scholars - consider the micro-technology of voting (the devil is in the detail), the historical relations between the secret ballot and universal suffrage, the use and abolition of secret voting in parliamentary decisions, and the sometimes perverse effects of the drive for greater openness and transparency in public affairs. The authors also discuss the normative questions of secret versus public voting in national elections and of optimal mixes of secrecy and publicity, as well as the opportunities for strategic behavior created by different voting systems. Together with two previous volumes on Collective Wisdom (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and Majority Decisions (Cambridge University Press, 2014), the book sets a new standard for interdisciplinary work on collective decision-making.

Comparative constitutional law has a long pedigree, but the comparative study of constitution-making has emerged and taken form only in the last quarter-century. While much of the initial impetus came from the study of the American and French constituent assemblies in the late eighteenth century, this volume exemplifies the large comparative scope of current research. The contributors discuss constituent assemblies in South East Asia, North Africa and the Middle East, Latin America, and in Nordic countries. Among the new insights they provide is a better understanding of how constituent assemblies may fail, either by not producing a document at all or by adopting a constitution that fails to serve as a neutral framework for ordinary politics. In a theoretical afterword, Jon Elster, an inspirational thinker on the current topic, offers an analysis of the micro-foundations of constitution-making, with special emphasis on the role of crises-generated passions.

Drawing on philosophy, political and social theory, decision-theory, economics, psychology, history and literature, Jon Elster's classic book Sour Grapes continues and complements the arguments of his acclaimed earlier book, Ulysses and the Sirens. Elster begins with an analysis of the notation of rationality, before tackling the notions of irrational behavior, desires and belief with highly sophisticated arguments that subvert the orthodox theories of rational choice. Presented in a fresh series livery and with a specially commissioned preface written by Richard Holton, illuminating its continuing importance to philosophical enquiry, Sour Grapes has been revived for a new generation of readers.

Drawing on philosophy, political and social theory, decision-theory, economics, psychology, history and literature, Jon Elster's classic book Sour Grapes continues and complements the arguments of his acclaimed earlier book, Ulysses and the Sirens. Elster begins with an analysis of the notation of rationality, before tackling the notions of irrational behavior, desires and belief with highly sophisticated arguments that subvert the orthodox theories of rational choice. Presented in a fresh series livery and with a specially commissioned preface written by Richard Holton, illuminating its continuing importance to philosophical enquiry, Sour Grapes has been revived for a new generation of readers.

Elster proposes a normative theory of collective decision making, inspired by Jeremy Bentham but not including his utilitarian philosophy. The central proposal is that in designing democratic institutions one should reduce as much as possible the impact of self-interest, passion, prejudice and bias on the decision makers, and then let the chips fall where they may. There is no independently defined good outcome that institutions can track, nor is there any way of reliably selecting good decision makers. In addition to a long initial chapter that surveys theories of collective decision making, notably social choice theory, and a chapter expounding and discussing Bentham's views, historical chapters on the jury, constituent assemblies and electoral systems develop and illustrate the main ideas. This work draws on a welter of case studies and historical episodes, from Thucydides and Plutarch to the present. It is also grounded in psychology, behavioral economics and law.

This new translation of an undisputed classic aims to be both accurate and readable. Tocqueville's subtlety of style and profundity of thought offer a challenge to readers as well as to translators. As both a Tocqueville scholar and an award-winning translator, Arthur Goldhammer is uniquely qualified for the task. In his Introduction, Jon Elster draws on his recent work to lay out the structure of Tocqueville's argument. Readers will appreciate The Ancien Regime and the French Revolution for its sense of irony as well as tragedy, for its deep insights into political psychology, and for its impassioned defense of liberty."

All social scientists, despite their differences on many issues, ask causal questions about the world. In this anthology, Andrew P. Vayda and Bradley B. Walters set forth strategy and methods to answer those questions. The selected readings, all illuminating causal explanation for social scientists, are not only by anthropologists, sociologists, economists, and human ecologists but also by philosophers, biologists, psychologists, historians, and specialists in other fields. The essays will appeal to those doing applied research on practical problems as well as those seeking mainly to satisfy their curiosity about the causes of whatever events or types of events interest them.

The notion of "the public sphere" has become increasingly central to theories and studies of democracy, media, and culture over the last few decades. It has also gained political importance in the context of the European Union's efforts to strengthen democracy, integration, and identity. The Idea of the Public Sphere offers a wide-ranging, accessible, and easy-to-use introduction to one of the most influential ideas in modern social and political thought, tracing its development from the origins of modern democracy in the Eighteenth Century to present day debates. This book brings key texts by the leading contributors in the field together in a single volume. It explores current topics such as the role of religion in public affairs, the implications of the internet for organizing public deliberation, and the transnationalisation of public issues.