Political Trust as Rational Choice

Abstract

As the title of this paper suggests, the notion is now well accepted that political outcomes are the consequence of the choices of the several actors, each seeking to realize his or her own goals. Rational choice theory, as this notion is called, is, in fact, the contemporary successor of institutionalism, on the one hand, and pluralism, on the other, which are the approaches to political science that dominated in the first half of this century.