and those who find their inspiration in economics point to choices.
James Duesenberry, an economist, nicely sums up the difference between
these two traditions, which shape the contending outlooks that divide
political science: “economics is all about how people make choices;
sociology is all about how they don’t have any choices to make.”^69
This connection to sociology and economics is, fundamentally, a
left–right connection.Homo sociologicus, indeed, is basically the
good-natured man of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and of the left, who
belongs to a society, follows social and cultural norms, and means
well. When he fails, it is because social forces compel him to act
wrongly.Homo economicus, on the other hand, is the calculating
individual of Thomas Hobbes and of the right, who relentlessly pur-
sues his own interest, to the point of becoming what Amartya Sen has
called a “social moron.”^70 When he is set free, this individual suc-
ceeds; collective and democratic institutions, however, may well fail.^71
Applied to politics, the assumption of self-interest borrowed from
economics has clear ideological implications. The market, notes
Swedish sociologist Lars Udehn, becomes “the sole institution with
the wonderful ability of turning private vice into public virtue,” while
political action “on the contrary [leads] to suboptimal waste and
serfdom.Ergo:the best society is a free market society.”^72
This core cleavage explains the methodological and epistemological
differences that separate political scientists. Economics is indeed a
deductive discipline, which seeks universal generalizations and builds
“clean models” from assumptions about individual interests. Socio-
logy is primarily inductive, and favors the “thick” descriptions that
can be developed only by scholars with “dirty hands.”^73 Economists
(^69) James S. Duesenberry, quoted in Peter A. Hall, “The Dilemmas of
70 Contemporary Social Science,”Boundary 2, vol. 34, no. 3, Fall 2007, 121–41.
Amartya K. Sen, “Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioral Foundations of
Economic Theory,”Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 6, no. 4, Summer 1977,
71 317–44, pp. 335–36.
Lars Udehn,The Limits of Public Choice: A Sociological Critique of the
Economic Theory of Politics, London, Routledge, 1996, p. 6; Paul Hirsch,
Stuart Michaels, and Ray Friedman, “ ‘Dirty Hands’ versus ‘Clean Models:’ Is
Sociology in Danger of Being Seduced by Economics?,”Theory and Society,
vol. 16, no. 3, May 1987, 317–36, p. 321.
(^72) Udehn,The Limits of Public Choice, pp. 194–95.
(^73) Hirsch, Michaels, and Friedman, “ ‘Dirty Hands’ Versus ‘Clean Models’,”
pp. 320–21.
218 Left and Right in Global Politics