Word: rationale
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Rational choice, for example, showed that those who would be affected by government regulations would be the only parties likely to try to influence the legislation. And so, counter-intuitively, such regulations often help rather than hinder the industries they are intended to control.
Successes notwithstanding, many of the names that made the Harvard department famous, as well as outside observers, decry rational choice.
But critics of rational choice say that the movement's forerunners had a very different modus operandi.
Whereas the behavioralists managed to blend into the rest of the department fairly well, rational choicers are accused of a cultishness in which they have come to exert undue control over Harvard's--among others'--Government Department.
"They do tend to evaluate all other political scholars on whether or not they are rational choice theorists," says former Harvard government professor James Q. Wilson. "They have not learned to be humble."