ABSTRACT
Cultural and rational choice analyses have long been seen as antithetical approaches, based on diametrically opposed views of human nature and theory construction. The late 1960s and the 1970s featured a struggle between cultural/psychological and rational choice approaches for the “soul” of theory in political science, with the latter gradually gaining the upper hand during this period. The 1980s and early 1990s have been a period of relative ascendancy for rational choice in political science, but this ascendancy has been accompanied by a growing number of critical examinations of the approach (e.g., Etzioni 1988; Mansbridge 1990; Cook and Levi 1990; Lane 1991; Monroe 1991; Green and Shapiro 1994) as well as by a notable renaissance of work within the cultural approach (e.g., Pye and Pye 1985; Eckstein 1988; Chilton 1988, 1991; Pye 1988; Gibbins 1989; Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky 1990; Inglehart 1990; Wilson 1992; Ellis 1993a; Putnam 1993; Diamond 1993; Abramson and Inglehart 1995). 1
