Conclusions 217
administration. Market values and democratic values are not interchangeable
equivalents, and rational choice favors the latter over the former. Th e decades
since the seminal contributions of Waldo (1948) and Simon (1947/1997) may
have been marked by an intellectual crisis in the study of public administration,
and the discipline’s diffi culty in intellectually accommodating its scholarly under-
pinnings with democratic values is by now well known.
Conclusions
Rational choice theory has provoked some of the most contentious and contro-
versial debates in public administration scholarship, but it has also provided the
discipline with a little-rivaled intellectual stimulant. Regardless of whether the
purpose has been to advocate the theory or to expose its faults, some of the most
original and valuable contributions to public administration knowledge come
from those working from a rational choice foundation.
Th e attractions of rational choice theory (especially its formal applications)
are not only its internal consistency but also its ability to generate logically de-
duced, empirically testable propositions. As long as its founding premises hold,
it is capable of parsimoniously and comprehensively explaining a broad range of
phenomena of interest to public administration scholars. In addition to present-
ing a formidable challenge to public administration orthodoxy, the central ideas
of rational choice theory have become popularized and were foundational to the
attempts by many Western democracies to “reinvent” their administrative appa-
ratus in the 1980s and 1990s.
Th e problem with rational choice is that signifi cant questions remain about
the validity of its starting premises. If these are incorrect, or valid only under lim-
ited circumstances, the broad claims of rational choice—and its widely adopted
prescriptive implications—immediately become suspect. As a deductive theo-
retical framework, rational choice stands and falls on the twin pillars of rational
self-interest and methodological individualism. As Buchanan and Tullock argue,
“Th e ultimate defense of the economic-individualist behavioral assumption must
be empirical” (1962, 28). Th us far, the empirical record has not defi nitively re-
jected these assumptions, but neither has it done much to confi rm them. One of
the persistent criticisms of rational choice theory is that its conception of human
nature is too narrow to be of much use. Consider the fi refi ghters who died while
trying to fi ght their way into the World Trade Center towers during the terrorist
attacks of 2001. Or the medical professionals from the Centers for Disease Con-
trol and Prevention who volunteered to treat Ebola victims during the outbreak in
West Africa in 2014, risking infection, and in some cases dying from the disease.
Undoubtedly, these men and women were doing a job they were being compen-
sated for, and job performance undoubtedly plays a role in the career prospects of
any civil servant. Yet to describe their actions as “self-interested” requires a very
broad interpretation of that concept. Or consider the slightly less drastic example