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Political Psychology

Political Psychology

Political Psychology

Jon Elster, Columbia University, New York
January 1993
Available
Paperback
9780521422864
$55.00
USD
Paperback
USD
Hardback

    This provocative new textbook takes up and develops the themes of rationality and irrationality in Jon Elster's earlier work. Its purposes are threefold. First, Elster shows how belief and preference formation in the realm of politics are shaped by social and political institutions. Second, he argues for an important distinction in the social sciences between mechanisms and theories. Third, he illustrates those general principles of political psychology through readings of three outstanding political psychologists: the French classical historian, Paul Veyne; the Soviet dissident writer, Alexander Zinoviev; the great French political theorist, Alexis de Tocqueville.

    Reviews & endorsements

    "As always, Elster has produced an analysis that is conspicuous for its elegance....Seldom can Tocqueville have been put through such a rigorous intellectual mincer." Rudolf Klein, Times Literary Supplement

    See more reviews

    Product details

    January 1993
    Hardback
    9780521411103
    216 pages
    222 × 143 × 19 mm
    0.378kg
    Available

    Table of Contents

    • Abbreviations
    • Preface
    • Introduction: why political psychology?
    • 1. A historian and the irrational: a reading of Bread and Circuses
    • 2. Internal and external negation: an essay in Ibanskian sociology
    • 3. Tocqueville's psychology I
    • 4. Tocqueville's psychology II
    • References
    • Index.
      Author
    • Jon Elster , Columbia University, New York