The Theory of Rational Choice

Abstract

After exposing the prisoner’s dilemma, this chapter will explore the thinking of four representatives of this school of thought and their approaches to studying society: James S. Coleman’s Internal Analysis of Systemic Behavior, George Homans’s and Peter Blau’s exchange theory, and Mearsheimer’s offensive realism. To explore Coleman’s theory further, the text will examine della Porta’s explanation through mechanisms of the birth, persistence, and decline of terrorist organizations. The text will also explore Kruglanski’s significance-quest theory and Petersen’s sociology of emotions to understand the limitations of the rational choice theory. The final section will be dedicated to Mearsheimer’s theory of offensive realism, which conceives states as rational actors.

Introduction

The rational choice theory posits that economic principles can be applied to explain non-economic phenomena. It views individuals as rational actors striving to maximize their utility. After exposing the prisoner’s dilemma, this chapter will explore the thinking of four representatives of this school of thought and their approaches to studying society: James S. Coleman’s Internal Analysis of Systemic Behavior, George Homans’s and Peter Blau’s exchange theory, and Mearsheimer’s offensive realism. An in-depth section will be dedicated to the model of sociological explanation proposed by Coleman, also known as “Coleman’s boat,” which will allow us to address the debate over the micro-macro link.

To explore Coleman’s theory further, the text will examine della Porta’s explanation through mechanisms of the birth, persistence, and decline of terrorist organizations. To effectively evaluate the strengths and limitations of della Porta’s approach, we will compare it with Kruglanski’s significance-quest theory and Petersen’s sociology of emotions. The final section will be dedicated to Mearsheimer’s theory of offensive realism, which conceives states as rational actors committed to acquiring increasingly larger shares of global power to maximize their individual utility.

In this chapter, we will explore different theories that delve into some of the most tragic events of our time. These events include the escalation of violence in Palestine, as discussed by Coleman, terrorism as examined by della Porta and Kruglanski, the ongoing war in Syria and Ukraine, the potential threat of a war between the United States and China over Taiwan, the issue of nuclear proliferation as discussed by Mearsheimer, and the power of emotions in unleashing extreme violence in civil wars (Petersen).

Hedonistic Creatures

The rational choice theory is based on the belief that individuals are driven by self-interest and aim to maximize their satisfaction by making choices based on their personal preferences and subjectivity. They are essentially economic actors or hedonistic creatures.

The society of rational choice theorists is based on cost-benefit analysis rather than emotions or feelings to stay united (Harris 2015). Men no longer have reasons to interact without profit, benefit, or rewards. In presenting this theory, I will emphasize the human mind. Interest in how the mind processes information unites all rational choice theorists. We could not understand anything about society without understanding how humans think: “To understand how people act and interact, we first have to understand how their minds work” (Elster 2007, 67).

The man portrayed by the rational choice theory is far from the one we encountered in the first generation of the Frankfurt school, yet just as elementary. On closer inspection, the man of the rational choice theory is not even more complex than the man of behaviorism. Behaviorists make man similar to a pigeon, while the theory of rational choice makes man similar to a computer. In both cases, the behavior is considered relatively predictable. The man of the rational choice theory is conceived to set up mathematical problems (Coleman 1990, 506). Not surprisingly, he/she is a very simple man, an extraordinarily simplified abstraction. James S. Coleman wrote that the actor of the theory of rational choice is an “elementary” actor, “a sort of homeostatic or goal-seeking entity,” “a kind of control system,” a “perfect purposive actor” (Coleman 1990, 504).

What does the mind of the actor of rational choice theory look like?

First, man’s mind is provided with intentionality. The concepts of “intention” and “purpose” revolve around our aspirations and aims for the future (March 1986, 149). Intentionality is a teleological concept that helps explain our current situation based on where we want to go (Hedström and Swedberg 1996, 32; Kiser and Hechter 1998, 790). We are always headed for something. The concept of purpose gives rise to explanations based on final causes. This type of explanation focuses on final causes instead of proximate causes and goes against the typical causal explanations used in science (Coleman 1990, 15).

Second, man’s mind is rational. It sounds like a truism, but it isn’t because, after having studied the chapter on Weber, we know that there are many ways of understanding the concept of rationality. In rational choice theory, rationality is understood as the ability of an individual to pursue a goal according to a coherent plan by adjusting the means to maximize advantages in a context characterized by scarcity of resources.

Third, man’s mind is an information-seeker. However inaccurate or incomplete they may be, it never ceases to gather information to confirm its beliefs and verify that its course of action has a minimum of coherence with the results it wants to achieve. Another criterion to evaluate rationality is the ability to establish an order of preferences among several options. A rational individual respects the transitivity of preferences. If it prefers X to Y and Y to Z, it should prefer X to Z. Rationality cannot be defined by just one type of behavior, and any theorist could considerably extend our list. According to Karl R. Popper, rationality implies the ability to learn from mistakes. Imagine coming across an unexpected step in your path. The surprise of the step makes you realize you were expecting a flat surface. These types of disappointments help us adjust our expectations. Rationality involves making these corrections and getting rid of certain disappointing expectations (Popper 1979, 344).

The Prisoner’s Dilemma

From what I have said so far, it is clear that the rational choice theory sees change as intentionally determined and not as the mere involuntary product of environmental forces that do not involve the individual’s will.

The importance of the individual is evident. But how important is the context in the rational choice theory?

The social context matters in that our actions must deal with the actions of others, also intentionally aimed at maximizing individual utility. Since there are others, there is also a juxtaposition of actions, and no one can be sure of the outcome of his/her action strategy. As Mike Tyson said: “Everyone has a plan ’till they get punched in the mouth” (Freedman 2013, IX).

The importance of context is made clear by the concept of unintended consequences with counterfinality and suboptimality being two types of unintended negative consequences that rational choice theorists focus on.

Counterfinality—a “diabolical subversion” of human praxis in Sartre’s analysis—leads to social contradictions. It occurs when individuals assume that what is optimal for them in a particular situation is also optimal for everyone else. An example is when Chinese peasants cut down trees to create more arable land. Unfortunately, this leads to deforestation, a major cause of soil erosion. As a result, Chinese peasants reduce the amount of cultivable land. Ironically, the free actions of these peasants, guided by their intentions, end up harming them in the same way their worst enemy would have (Turner 2014, 39).

Suboptimality occurs when people making interdependent choices know that others will do the same, even being aware that a different strategy could have resulted in everyone obtaining at least as much. An example of suboptimality is the Chinese farmer who, aware that his action will increase deforestation, nevertheless decides to cut down trees because he/she thinks his/her interests will improve.

In sum, when individual actions are combined, they can sometimes lead to unintended consequences. Rational choice theorists examine this phenomenon using game theory, with the prisoner’s dilemma being one example of suboptimality.

Picture yourself getting arrested for committing a crime with your partner and being placed in separate cells without any means of communicating with each other. The authorities propose a deal to you, which they have also offered to your partner. This puts your fate in a vulnerable position as your partner could potentially impact your outcome negatively and significantly.

• (1) If you confess and your partner denies, you will be released, and he/she will suffer a life sentence.

• (2) If you both confess, you will suffer the same sentence of twenty years in prison.

• (3) If you both deny it, you will face the same five-year prison sentence.

You are both leaning toward the future. You would like to get out of prison, but there is nothing more than a criminal link between you and your accomplice. In the absence of an emotional bond, both of you are concerned only with your sentence, and the choice will be immediate: Rational reasoning leads you to confess, since confession is the most advantageous choice on an individual level, regardless of the choice of your accomplice.

By confessing, you risk your freedom or twenty years in prison; by denying, you risk life imprisonment because your accomplice could confess by materializing, to your detriment, option number 1. If your accomplice is silent and you confess, you are free, while you suffer five years in prison if you also deny your crime. A similar reasoning applies if your accomplice confesses. You would both suffer twenty years in prison, but if you denied it, you would suffer life imprisonment.

Whatever the choice of your accomplice, you should confess. The problem is that your accomplice was offered the same pact and he/she will only care about the length of his/her sentence and, therefore, rationality will induce him/her to confess.

But, if you both confess, you will face a sentence of twenty years. It is clear that the best that can happen to you is that both of you refuse to confess, as this solution would cost you five years in prison instead of twenty.

The prisoner’s dilemma is meant to demonstrate that rational conduct can cause unintended and sub-optimal results. The prisoner’s dilemma is an example of a variable-sum or non-zero-sum game in which the net winnings for all players depend on each player’s strategy. A variable-sum game, therefore, is a game with a mixture of conflict and collaboration.

The prisoner’s dilemma shows that rationality is insufficient to ensure the best outcome for the individuals involved in the strategic game. Raymond Boudon considers “perverse effects” as a possible variant of the prisoner game. Perverse effects are undesirable: The two prisoners both confess, but they would have benefited more from the cooperation.

Let’s summarize what we have said so far in very simple terms.

According to the rational choice theory, economic principles can be applied to explain non-economic phenomena (Elster 1986, 4). The rational choice theory comprises three interconnected assumptions: The assumption of intentionality, rationality, and subjectivity.

James C. Coleman

Coleman (1926–1995) was a long-time Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. In 1990, he published Foundations of Social Theory, which he dedicated to his teacher Merton, whom he studied with at Columbia University. This book by Coleman has been regarded as the most ambitious attempt to construct a systematic social action theory from Parsons’s The Structure of Social Action onward (Trigilia 2005, XI). We are confronted with a vast and complex work. Coleman has acquired international notoriety thanks to his studies on the sociology of education, particularly attentive to the influence of the social context, and of the family, in particular, on students’ school careers. During these studies, he develops the concept of social capital, which we will talk about. In 1961, he published The Adolescent Society (Coleman 1961) and, in 1966, Equality of Educational Opportunity (Coleman 1966), also known as “the Coleman Report,” made for the US government. The Coleman Report provided evidence of the “achievement gap” between blacks and whites on a broad scale. In this research, Coleman suggests integrating white and black students into the same classes to improve the latter’s performance. When he returns to the subject ten years later, he finds that many of the public schools that had adopted racial integration programs had seen a decline in enrollment of white middle-class students.

I will begin to study how Coleman uses economic rationality to explain revolutions or how man’s mind processes information during revolutionary violence to choose the action that will maximize its utility.

Coleman’s study of revolutions is rich and complex, requiring me to proceed in an orderly fashion in three sections, the first two rather short and the third longer.

In the first section, I set out the general principles of Coleman’s rational choice theory on systems of authority.

In the second, I expose the theory of revolutions that Coleman wants to refute or the frustration-aggression hypothesis, according to which revolutions break out through a mechanism of simple aggregation of individual actions. In sum, many frustrated individuals become a mass, leading to a revolt. Coleman is not satisfied with this explanation and strives to enrich it.

In the third, I present Coleman’s rational choice theory of revolutions.

Systems of Authority

Methodological individualism is Coleman’s starting point.

If social actors withdraw their consent, the legitimacy of the authority ceases to exist. Authority depends on the obedience and active support of the members of society. The moment citizens stop obeying the president of the United States or following his/her political leadership, the authority of the American government is undermined and loses its ability to lead. The active commitment of subordinates is indispensable for the existence of any system, even the most repressive one, such as the slave society. Sometimes, oppressive systems only fall apart due to the peaceful disobedience of the oppressed individual.

Among the examples of revocation of authority, Coleman cites the cases of the riots against the war in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s and the rebellion against Prohibition in the 1920s. Coleman speaks of “withdrawal of authority,” rather than a “regime collapse,” to attribute centrality to the individual. In many systems of authority, but not all, individuals have the right to revoke authority by exiting the system. However, this does not happen frequently because the decision to leave the system has a cost, which the social actors must calculate to maximize gains and contain losses. The rational actor must do his/her accounts well. By leaving the union, he/she could lose his job; by leaving the state, he/she could lose all the material and social resources that derive from the status of citizen.

Suppose he/she concludes that these decisions are too expensive for him/her. In that case, the individual may decide to stay in the system, trying to delegitimize authority from within. Still, it will not be easy for him/her because the system of authority rests on a consensual, reinforced basis by a set of formal institutions, including the police and the military, which use physical control to crush attempts to revoke authority.

Another possibility to escape the state’s power offered to the individual is “internal emigration,” or the organization of a small group living in isolation as an independent unit in the wider society. This is the case of the agricultural communities built in the 1960s in the United States. However, not all systems of authority allow one to pursue the non-compliance option. Individuals can emigrate abroad, stop paying taxes, and refuse to take children to school. Still, the state has the police, which can destroy their enclave, withdraw their passports, and deprive them of parental authority.

What other way is offered to the individuals to withdraw the rights of control over them?

The individual can try to win it by going to the polls, but free elections cannot eliminate the structure of authority. At most they can bring about a change in the governing class. Coleman acknowledges the existence of some cases in which the systems of authority have changed without the use of force and cites the example of the end of the government of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines in 1986 when the election of Corazon Aquino allowed the suspension of the Philippine constitution and dissolution of parliament without the use of force. He also cites the case of regime change in Iran in 1979, when the Shah of Persia saw his people withdrawing his authority. But these are very rare cases, which probably would not have occurred if those heads of government had retained control over the army. As long as the individual fights alone against the system of authority, it cannot succeed in withdrawing authority.

All these premises lead Coleman to the heart of the matter: To exercise power against the state’s authority, it is necessary to lead a revolution; a mass movement is required.

Coleman’s Criticism of the Frustration-Revolt Hypothesis

Having clarified the general principles, I move to consider the theory of revolution that Coleman wants to overcome, the frustration-aggression hypothesis presented by Ter R. Gurr in Why Men Rebel, published in 1970.

According to Gurr, revolution requires relative deprivation.

Relative deprivation can be defined as an imbalance between our expectations and our satisfaction. Verbatim: “Relative deprivation (RD) is defined as actors’ perception of discrepancy between their value expectations and their value capabilities. Value expectations are the goods and conditions of life to which people believe they are rightfully entitled. Value capabilities are the goods and conditions they think they are capable of getting and keeping” (Gurr 1970, 24).

Relative deprivation can derive either from a raising of expectations in the face of a real unchanged situation (aspirational deprivation); both from the fact that the situation perceived by the group has deteriorated (decremental deprivation); and, finally, the coexistence of both conditions or the raising of expectations and the deterioration of the perceived situation (progressive deprivation). The more acute and widespread the perception of relative deprivation by the members of a group, the more there will be the possibility that they resort to collective violence against other groups or against the current political regime.

In Why Men Rebel, Gurr exposes the relationship between the dissatisfaction of the ruled and revolutionary ruptures through three graphs (Fig. 13.1).

Fig. 13.1

Decremental deprivation (Gurr 1970, 47)

The figure relating to decremental deprivation indicates dissatisfaction resulting from a deterioration of the real situation in the face of stable value expectations. Line A represents the value expectations; line B the value capabilities. Point C indicates the moment in which the insurrection erupts. Decremental deprivation is typical of jacqueries, which do not aspire to upset the fundamental values of society, but to rebel against some abuses, which have become particularly hateful. It is a revolt that aims to re-establish uses that have been trampled on. It is violence that looks to the past and not to the future. Its effects, therefore, are contained. The established order is not called into question (Fig. 13.2).

Fig. 13.2

Aspirational deprivation. (Source: Gurr 1970, 51)

The figure relating to aspirational deprivation indicates growth in value expectations in the face of stable value capabilities.

This is typical of capitalist societies characterized by intense processes of social mobility. In a world in constant transformation, social groups are led to compare their position with reference groups. The improvement of the conditions of group X can provoke a desire for revenge in group Y. Even during times of economic growth, there can be individuals who feel resentful toward those who have improved their social status. This can lead to a desire to challenge the established order (Fig. 13.3).

Fig. 13.3

Progressive deprivation. (Source: Gurr 1970, 53)

The case of progressive deprivation is the most explosive since the growth of value expectations and the deterioration of value capabilities verify themselves together.

The theory of relative deprivation has been used to solve a great conundrum of social life, which has come to light with the advancement of historical studies. Many assume that the main revolutions in history, for example, the French Revolution, broke out because the economic conditions of the population had worsened. Historians have found that the propensity to revolt against authority increases after people have seen their living conditions improve.

Frustration theorists believe that when economic conditions improve, people expect more progress. If their expectations are not met, they become frustrated and angry. This paradox explains why many revolutions occur even when individuals have improved their social status. However, Coleman disagrees with this explanation, citing several weaknesses in the theory.

According to frustration theorists, economic progress leads to higher expectations from people. Failure to meet these expectations leads to frustration and anger, which is often the cause of many revolutions. Despite this commonly accepted paradox, Coleman dissents and argues that the theory has several weaknesses.

According to frustration theorists, this paradox occurs because the improvement in economic conditions creates, in individuals, the expectation of further progress. Failure to meet these expectations leads to frustration and anger, which is often the cause of many revolutions. Despite this commonly accepted paradox, Coleman dissents and argues that the theory has several weaknesses.

The first weakness is that it is not automatic that frustration leads to increased anger against rulers. In some cases, frustration leads to apathy; in others, it leads to despair and resignation. In some instances, individuals lack the necessary intellectual tools to comprehend the connection between their situation and the social structure, resulting in them turning to superstition as a coping mechanism.

The second weakness is that frustration theorists are individualistic, but they postulate a hyper-simplified relationship between the individual and revolutionary violence, on the basis of which a frustrated individual easily turns around. If there are many frustrated people, then a revolution will occur by simple summation of individual actions. Coleman makes it clear that his rational choice theory does not seek to explain revolutionary ruptures with the frustration of subordinates and that Gurr’s explanation seems simplistic to him. Coleman doesn’t use this expression, but that’s what he means.

In summary, Coleman believes that the frustration-revolt hypothesis explains the micro-macro link too simply and mechanically. At most, it can only explain the overall readiness of a population to revolt. Quite differently, for a revolution to occur, a complex organization, wide coordination from above, and significant mobilization of resources are needed.

For the sake of completeness of the information, I must specify that Gurr expanded his model of the explanation of revolutions, including other variables, which strengthened his contribution (Gurr 1986). Anyway, my focus is on something other than evaluating Gurr’s merits. Rather, I aim to comprehend how Coleman uses rational choice theory to analyze a particular phenomenon. The best way to understand a theory is to apply it.

According to Coleman, power theorists explain revolutions much better than frustration theorists (Leites and Wolf 1970; Tullock 1974; Laquer 1976; Oberschall 1978; Tilly 1978; Goldstone 1986).

Frustration theorists conceive revolutionary action as an expressive action without a precise purpose, and they conceive the micro-macro link as the consequence of the simple aggregation of individual actions without considering the related problems to collective participation.

On the other hand, power theorists conceive revolutionary action as an intentional action with a precise purpose and they also conceive the micro-macro transition as a problematic fact.

It is precisely this problematic fact that I will deal with in the following pages.

Coleman’s Explanation of Revolutions

I have finally arrived at Coleman’s theory of revolution, which is individualistic. I sum it up as follows: Revolutionary action is a rational choice that depends on the perception of the possibility of success.

As a hedonistic creature, the rational actor finds it completely irrational to rebel or support a rebellion if he/she thinks it is doomed to failure. Individuals rebel or support rebellions if two conditions exist.

The first is that the eventual collapse of authority brings them personal gain, and the second is the high probability of overthrowing authority.

Additionally, believing that ultimate victory is achievable is crucial in attracting those who may not have a direct stake in the rebellion’s success. While it is true that some individuals may not have a personal interest in the rebellion, it is still more beneficial for them to align themselves with the winning side. The belief that winning is possible significantly impacts the inclination to rebel against authority. On the other hand, the absence of this perception serves as a strong deterrent to revolutionary actions.

Let’s summarize what we have said so far so as not to lose the thread: Individuals are willing to rebel, not because they are frustrated, but because they think the rebellion can be successful and because they calculate that the revolution would bring them gains. Coleman abandons the idea that frustration is the precondition for an individual to rebel.

At this point, Coleman is ready to explain why people tend to rebel as their living conditions improve. This is because individuals, having improved their position, feel safer and stronger and think they have a better chance of overthrowing rulers. In this way, the power theorists come to a series of conclusions contrary to common sense: Power should not worry too much about winning the hearts and minds of the people.

Its strength is in strength itself.

If the government appears strong, the population will think that the revolt will not be successful and, with the exceptions removed, will find it completely irrational to engage in an enterprise doomed to failure. This happens because ordinary men do not attach all this importance to the ideals or peculiarities of political systems. Their dominant concern is very practical and is the social order:

To achieve success, the revolutionaries’ strategy should not focus on gaining the people’s support but rather on creating the perception that they are powerful. In this situation, it’s not crucial for most of the population to side with the authorities or the revolutionaries. What’s important is what people believe about each side’s relative strength and the potential consequences of supporting one over the other. In other words, what matters the most is the perception of power.

Historical evidence shows that people often experience high frustration before certain revolutions. How can power theorists explain increased frustration in the population on the eve of revolutions?

According to Coleman, frustration exists, but it is because people feel stronger and do not accept that the hated government remains in office. Their confidence in overcoming its power leads to a decreased inclination to accept its authority. They believe they can defeat it and are less willing to submit to its authority.

In support of his thesis, Coleman cites the case of Palestine in the 1970s. At that time, the Palestinian Arabs of the West Bank had seen their occupation level and general living conditions improve, yet they began to lash out at the Israeli authorities. The case of Palestinians in the West Bank confirms that frustration against authority grows during economic prosperity. Still, frustration did not cause the revolt against Israeli authority. For many reasons, including some terrorist actions against Israelis by young Palestinians in the late 1970s, the Palestinian population had seen self-confidence grow. As a result, they grew stronger and were unwilling to continue submitting to the Israeli government.

At this point, Coleman adds new variables to his model of explanation. He points out that, for a revolt to break out, three other conditions are necessary besides those we have already encountered. First, a revolutionary elite is needed to organize attacks against the authority. Second, the population must be dissatisfied with the existing order. Third, individuals must believe they won’t be punished for their rebellious actions.

Coleman’s writing style is characterized by gradually revealing his fundamental ideas rather than presenting them all at once. In order to maintain coherence in the discussion, I will summarize the key variables he uses to explain the outbreak of a revolution.

• First: Individuals need to feel more self-confident than in the past

• Second: Individuals must be dissatisfied with the ruling regime

• Third: Individuals must believe that the revolt will be successful

• Fourth: Individuals must find regime change personally beneficial

• Fifth: There must be an elite of revolutionaries who bear the cost of the organization

• Sixth: Individuals must think they can get away with it

The sixth variable suggests that if people rebel without being punished, they are more likely to rebel again in the future.

Coleman explains, by “the getting away with it” variable, the outbreak of the revolution in France of 1789.

The common people, including peasants, had started challenging the political system without facing opposition from the nobility or the third estate. They believed that they could act with impunity and even went on to take over the Bastille. If the ruling regime does not strike hard in the face of acts of rebellion, it will be in trouble sooner or later.

Take the case of the Palestinian revolt.

With time, four things changed.

The first is that the PLO had grown stronger and had increased its roots and authority among the Palestinian Arabs of the West Bank.

The second is that there were terrorist actions against Israeli-recognized mayors of West Bank cities and the Israeli occupation forces—attacks that led Palestinian Arabs to believe that the Israelis could be defeated.

The third is that the Arabs of the West Bank were enraged by a series of actions carried out by the Israeli authorities and religious and nationalist Jews, such as the occupation of some areas of the Muslim quarter in the old city of Jerusalem, the cutting down of olive trees in lands that the Arabs considered their own, and the construction of a yeshiva—an educational institution for teaching the Jewish religion—in the center of an Arab residential area.

The fourth is that new institutions arose in the West Bank, especially high schools, which were not subject to the control of the older generation of Arab Palestinians. This caused the social control of parents over young children to loosen. Young Palestinian Arabs were much more likely to get away with attacking Israelis because their parental control was reduced, and they were not in danger of being punished in the family for their acts of rebellion.

In summary: (1) The PLO appeared stronger and more legitimate in the eyes of the Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank; (2) the Israeli authority appeared weaker and more illegitimate; (3) the Palestinian Arabs felt stronger and, consequently, more confident that they could overthrow the Israeli authority; and (4) a social organization was born in the West Bank controlled by young people and not by their families supported by Israel and opposed to violence.

Coleman applies a similar explanation model to the French Revolution. The third state rebelled against the monarchy’s authority because they were discontented with the existing system, possessed more resources, and believed they could successfully rise against it.

Free Riders and Ideologies

The variables that intervene in triggering a revolution are numerous, but, in the end, power is the tip of the balance, and the people act according to its fluctuations. It is essential to think that you can win. However, there is the free rider’s problem, those who hope for a revolution but do not participate in collective action to pass the participation costs on to other rebels.

Coleman embellishes his pages, making us enter the mind of a free rider struggling with understanding what he/she should do. Should he/she risk or pass the participation costs on to others? Said in sociological terms, Coleman describes the motivational situation of potential activists in the face of the possibility of a revolution with these words. The free rider’s mind is portrayed as a computer calculating percentages and data.

Imagine that the potential activist values the success of the revolution at 100. If other people join in the revolutionary action, he/she perceives the likelihood of the revolution succeeding as 50%. According to his/her estimation, his/her involvement will improve the chance of success by 1%. However, engaging in political activities can be risky, not only because it takes away time from other things but also due to the possibility of punishment from authorities. He/she calculates that the punishment will cost him/her 20 points on the scale, while the revolution’s success is still worth 100 points for him/her. Punishment is certain if others don’t act, but if they do, it only has a 50% chance of happening. And so, if he/she acts alone, he/she will have a disadvantage of –20. However, if others do take action, his/her benefit will be determined by the calculation (50 + 1 – 20 × 0.5) − 50, resulting in a total of 9.

According to Coleman’s table, if the potential activist decides to act alone, he/she will experience a loss of 20. Even if others decide to act, the potential activist will still have a net loss of 9. Coleman concludes that it’s not beneficial for the potential activist to take action, regardless of what others do.

What are the costs and benefits of acting for the individual? (Fig. 13.4).

Fig. 13.4

Cost-benefit calculation of revolutionary action. (Source: Coleman 1990, 483)

However, not everyone is a free rider and some individuals may not even think about the idea of being one.

At this point, we must be very careful because Coleman helps us understand the power of ideologies in social change.

Those who are inspired by a utopian ideology reach a very high level of emotional involvement in the revolutionary cause. Coleman assigns a key role to the ideology that played a fundamental role in collective mobilization during significant historical revolutions in Africa, the West, and the Middle East. According to Coleman, Marxist ideology and religious beliefs, such as Protestantism, Catholicism, and Islam, played a significant role in revolutionary movements like the Northern Ireland revolt against England and the 1979 revolution in Iran.

The main functions of ideology are three and they are all very important.

The first is to provide a vision of a perfect society, depicting a peaceful and harmonious community that can only exist after the current governing system is replaced.

The second is to make the revolutionary group more cohesive internally. This is because only a small portion of the population actively participates in a revolution.

The third is to motivate activists driven by ideological fanaticism to fight for the revolution, even if they believe it may not be successful. By finding psychic rewards in its ideology, the revolutionary group can make up for its lack of a conspicuous social capital they have compared to the authority system they oppose. Ideology can unleash an inner strength to reduce the gap between the social capital of the authority structure and the much smaller one of the revolutionaries. Utopian ideology matters. Its importance lies in its benefits being based on participation, not on the outcome of a revolt or an individual’s effectiveness in achieving success for the final cause.

By “social capital,” Coleman means those properties of social structures that facilitate individuals in pursuing their purposes. Social capital is a “resource for action” (Coleman 1988, 95). He aims to incorporate the concept of social structure into the rational action paradigm and rejects extreme individualistic premises. Coleman is an individualist who emphasizes how the social structure influences the individual’s strategic reasoning.

At the end of his research on revolution and revolt, Coleman lists a number of practical advices, divided into three sections.

The first section includes recommendations valid both for the authorities and for the revolutionaries; the second presents the recommendations addressed to the authority alone; the third section lists the recommendations addressed only to revolutionaries.

Recommendation for rulers and revolutionaries:

• (1) In the course of the revolt, try to achieve success as soon as possible, to demonstrate your power.

• (2) Threaten and deliver safe and severe punishments against those who act in support of the other party.

• (3) Provide material incentives (both early and in the form of post-riot promises) to potential participants that can be important to the success.

• (4) Avoid indiscriminate terror.

Recommendations for the authority alone:

• (1) Stay strong toward the outside world.

• (2) Do not leave an internal challenge to authority unanswered. If you are unable to respond to the challenge, divert attention by using power in another domain to counterbalance.

• (3) Don’t show indecision.

• (4) Weaken alternative ideologies.

• (5) Reduce the possibility that opposition members have closed social structures.

• (6) Develop institutions capable of addressing the discontent of the population on an individual level (i.e., without providing a context where communication can spread and amplify discontent).

Recommendations for revolutionaries only:

• (1) Find and disseminate a utopian ideology that challenges the values expressed by the current authority structure and provides an alternative vision for the future.

• (2) Use any means to demonstrate the weakness of authority, excluding actions universally considered illegitimate.

• (3) Cut contacts between potential recruits and those who do not support the uprising and develop a high degree of closure in supporter groups.

• (4) Incorporate into the proposals for change the reasons for discontent already present in the population.

• (5) Get as much external support as possible.

Internal Analysis of Systemic Behavior

As we have seen, Coleman’s version of methodological individualism is quite complex. Coleman labels his model of explanation as “the internal analysis of system behavior” (Coleman 1990, 2), of which I must clarify the meaning.

According to Coleman, there are two ways of explaining the behavior of social systems.

The first is based on case samples of systemic behavior or the observation of the system’s behavior as a whole for a certain period. An example of research on a sample of cases is factorial analysis to explain nations’ political change and economic development. An example of research based on observing a system as a whole is the natural history approach, which uses aggregate economic data or economic cycle analysis.

The second way of explaining the behavior of social systems, the one preferred by Coleman, involves examining the processes within the system, that is, the analysis of components or units at a lower level than that of the system. In some cases, the internal components are individuals who are part of the social system; in other cases, the components are represented by institutions within the system or by the subgroups that are part of it. The analysis is aimed at a lower level than the systems in both cases.

Coleman tries to explain the behavior of the social system through its parts.

On closer inspection, this is exactly what he did in his theory of revolutions. He considers many internal components of the social system, trying to understand their interdependence and the causal mechanisms at play. In Coleman’s model, the behavior of the system is determined by the actions of its individual parts, the parts of which it is made off.

This methodological choice is also linked to the desire to make sociology a usable tool for reforming society. Suppose the sociologist manages to identify that element, or those internal elements, particularly critical in causing a certain behavior of the system. In that case, the political decision-maker can intervene to modify it. An explanation can have a significant impact if it forms the basis for a purposeful intervention that can change systemic behavior. They sound like Durkheim’s words about suicide.

In his studies on revolutions, Coleman reveals his passion for a socially “usable” sociology when he proposes his recipes for rulers and revolutionaries, with which he wants to demonstrate the practical usefulness of his theory. If we compare Marcuse’s sociology with that of Coleman, it appears quite evident that the former, unlike the latter, does not offer tools for reforming society. As we well know, revolutionary theorists do not consider this to be a limitation of their sociology since they reject all aspects of the bourgeoisie system, which they consider unreformable due to the level of irreversible degeneration they attribute to it. In revolutionary theory, there are three options: To escape from the system, to hope for its downfall, or to favor its subversion.

Although it has already emerged, it is better to reiterate it. The purpose of the social sciences is not the explanation of the behavior of individuals but the explanation of social phenomena. Coleman recognizes that, in some cases, social phenomena are formed by simple aggregation of individual actions, but, in most cases, this is not the case. The dynamics are more complex, as seen in his studies on revolutions. Coleman explains the social system’s functioning while maintaining the micro-foundations importance. The central object must be the social system. Whether it’s a group of two people, a society, or even the entire international system, the central object of analysis should always be the social system as a unit, not the individuals or other components that constitute it.

The Micro-Macro Link and the Coleman’s Boat

Coleman is particularly interested in the micro-macro link, that is, the process through which the actions of N individual and collective actors are transformed into a macro phenomenon.

Coleman clarifies how neoclassical economics explains the transition from micro to macro to clarify how its model is different. Neoclassical economics is essentially disinterested in the social structure and assumes that many independent individual actions, aggregating, give life to a macro phenomenon. In some cases, macro phenomena are formed precisely in this way and, therefore, do not criticize explanations based on the simple aggregation of individual actions. However, some large-scale events cannot be explained by adding individual actions.

In many cases, it is necessary to consider the interdependence of the actions and the system’s constraints. The example of the riots in the West Bank, which we have analyzed in the previous pages, makes everything very clear: Coleman examines the PLO, the relationship between Palestinian youth and their families, the relationship between the families of Palestinian youth and the Israeli authority, the perception that the uprising could be successful, the conviction of not suffering consequences, etc. Coleman explains that the Palestinian revolt results from a multiplicity of interdependencies.

To better understand Coleman’s thinking, let’s see how he graphically represents the model with which the theorists of frustration explain the revolution, which, as we know, he finds unsatisfactory (Fig. 13.5).

Fig. 13.5

Frustration-Revolt model. (Source: Coleman 1990, 478)

The frustration theory holds that the improvement of the conditions of society creates frustration in individuals, thus leading to the revolution.

In this graph, there are three related links.

The first link goes from the systemic level to that of the individual; the second is entirely at the individual level; the third goes from the individual to the systemic level. Depending on the sociologist’s understanding of what causes frustration, the first link may take various forms: Short-term crisis, relative deprivation, growth of expectations determined by the rapidity of change, or others. A simple psychological proposition represents the second link: Frustration breeds aggression. The third link is implicit: The simple aggregation of individual aggressions determines a social phenomenon, that is, a revolution. According to this scheme, the transition from micro to macro is conceived as a simple aggregation of individual attitudes or beliefs. Coleman explains that this model stops working well if we consider systemic behavior.

But what is systemic behavior for Coleman?

According to his terminology, the macro level is nothing more than the behavior of a system of actors whose actions are interdependent. In the case of the action of a nation, systemic behavior derives from the interdependent actions of the actors within the nation.

Now let’s see Coleman’s scheme on the micro-macro link that Coleman did not invent since a previous explicit version can be found in David McClelland (McClelland 1961, 47; Barbera 2007, 44) (Fig. 13.6).

Fig. 13.6

Coleman’s diagram. (Source: Raub and Voss 2017, 13)

To make it easier, we will use a simplified diagram, which includes four letters: A, B, C, and D. This simplified diagram was developed by the philosopher of science Petri Ylikoski (Ylikoski 2016, 2).

In the upper part, the diagram represents the macro level (arrow 4); in the lower part, the individual agents are indicated (arrow 2) (Fig. 13.7).

Fig. 13.7

Coleman’s scheme modified by Ylikoski. (Source: Ylikoski 2016, 2)

Groups, organizations, or nations can represent the macro level. It depends on our research interest and on how we conceptualize the phenomenon we want to explain. The micro level is also flexible: It could be represented by individuals but also by families, etc. What we find at the macro or micro levels depends on how the researcher sets up the problem. For example, if the macro level is the international system, we could find states at the micro level. Points A and D refer to different macro social phenomena, which take the name of “explanandum,” that is, the phenomena to be explained. It is essential to clarify that A and D refer not to the entire macro level but only to particular facts relevant to the hypothesis under consideration.

A indicates the extra-individual social factors that could be indicated as causes of social phenomena which affect individuals.

D indicates the social macro phenomena that must be explained: Revolution, economic structures, inequalities, panic phenomena, electoral results, the disintegration of families, etc. The concept of “macro” can vary from a group of two individuals to states.

A can vary a lot.

B refers to the properties of agents and their situations. B can indicate values, opportunities or interests, beliefs, desires, goals, motivations, emotions, habits, routines, cognitive patterns, identities, and more. B’s role is to mediate between social influences and individual behavior. Sociologists—Ylikoski points out—are not primarily interested in explaining the facts that fall into B. The elements contained in B are important because they explain the behavior (C). In other words, B mediates the influence of A on C.

C refers to behavioral consequences, which can be choices or actions. These consequences are important phenomena to be explained, for sociology, but they are also a step forward in explaining D, that is, system-level effects. B and C are not necessarily individual persons. They can also be institutions within the system or subgroups. They could also be enterprises, for example. Rational and intentional actors inhabit the micro level.

Coleman tried to explain the causal link between arrows 1, 2, and 3, using Weber’s studies as an example:

• Arrow 1: Protestant religious doctrine generates certain values in its followers.

• Arrow 2: Individuals with certain values adopt certain types of orientations toward economic behavior.

• Arrow 3: Certain orientations to economic behavior on the part of individuals favor the development of a capitalist economic organization in a society.

After talking about arrows 1, 2, and 3, we finally come to arrow four, which is the starting point of the analysis proposed by the diagram.

Arrow 4 could be a correlation between A and D, or it could be a hypothetical causal connection between these variables. The diagram’s purpose is to help establish whether the relationship between A and D is truly causal, and if it is, why. The use of the diagram begins with dissatisfaction with what we know about the link between A and D.

In an attempt to popularize Coleman’s Boat, Ylikoski has developed an explanation for a non-expert audience as part of a project conducted at the Institute for Analytical Sociology of Linköping University in Sweden. Believing that Coleman’s Boat is useful in helping individuals and governments to address the problems of our societies more consciously, Ylikoski made a video. (Graphics and design by Wasita Witchutraiphob. Voice by Susanna Snell.) It is not surprising that similar intentions animate Ylikoski. As we have seen, Coleman believed that sociology should be used to correct certain dramatic problems in our society, and he put his knowledge at the service of the American government to help black children in hopes of improving their social future. Not surprisingly, Coleman’s admirers are generally socially committed.

Let’s see if what we said about the Coleman Boat can be simplified further. I will give the example of “citizens’ income” for the poor in Italy, the flagship policy of the Five Star Movement (M5S).

When we use the Coleman Boat, we must first think about the link between A and D. Arrow 4 refers to the hypothetical causal relationship between them.

For example, does the citizens’ income increase or decrease social inequality? Some think that social injustices increase because it pushes some people to work illegally and to collect money from the state and that it causes them not to work at all, living on subsidies. Critics argue that the money allocated for citizens’ income could have been used to support business owners. Others have opposite ideas and think that the citizens’ income is right in itself because the state must help the needy, but also because the citizens’ income will support demand and, in the end, new consumption will improve the whole economy.

I am not interested in entering this debate.

I am interested in understanding how the cause produces the effect.

Recall that, for Weber, a scientific explanation needs to be a causal explanation. In the case of our example, A is represented by the government, which introduces the citizens’ income, and D is the change produced in social equality. Immediately after looking at arrow 4, we must turn our gaze to arrow 1 and try to understand how the macro phenomenon A affects B, that is, the individual.

Arrow 1 takes us from the macro to the micro level. The various ways in which A can influence an individual’s ideas and desires are indicated by B. Each individual has particular characteristics, and how A impacts B depends on many variables, including social status, income, age, etc. Basic structural and institutional conditions mediate the causal influence between A and B. According to socio-political contexts, the same type of policy A can have very different consequences for B.

Immediately after looking at arrow 1, we must turn our gaze to arrow 2, which concerns the theory of individual action and raises the following question: Do the consequences recorded in point B have consequences on the individual’s behavior and, possibly, which ones? Point C indicates changes in individual behaviors.

To complete our analysis, we must follow arrow 3 and go up from the micro to the macro level. The problem is interdependence: An individual’s behavior depends on other individuals’ behavior. We cannot always and only think about aggregating free and independent individual actions—Coleman warns—because actions are often interdependent, like those that led to the Palestinian revolt.

Ylikoski clarified that sociologists who are not methodological individualists or rational choice theorists can also use the Coleman diagram. The Coleman’s boat is a kind of “gymnastics of the mind.” It has the advantage of enhancing the cognitive abilities of the sociologist, pushing him/her to ask himself always new questions prompted by the interdependence of phenomena. A sociologist must answer a series of questions to gain a theoretical understanding of a social phenomenon. The diagram employed for this purpose is beneficial since it encourages new lines of reasoning about the phenomenon. It is not merely a recapitulation of what is already known but a productive cognitive tool.

Coleman’s boat makes the difference between micro-foundation and micro-reduction clear: Coleman is a proponent of the former, not the latter.

The micro-reductionist approach intends to explain social phenomena only on the basis of individual actions, eliminating the intervention of supra-individual elements from the explanation.

The micro-foundational approach, on the other hand, proposes to explain social phenomena based on individual actions, but also including system elements in the explanation. In other words, Coleman’s micro-foundation aims to avoid “short circuits” in the causal explanation, which consists in explaining a macro phenomenon using only other macro elements.

Coleman’s approach is always of an individualistic type but is a particular methodological individualism (Udehn 2001, 2002). To distinguish it from the early methodological individualism, various labels have been used, including “individualistic holism,” “weak methodological individualism,” “systemic individualism,” and “structural individualism” (Raub 1982; Pettit 1993; Udehn 2001, 2002; Bunge 2000).

Coleman’s Boat is very similar to Raymond Boudon’s model of explanation (Panebianco 2009, 30), which we encountered in the chapter on Spencer. It is also called the “Boudon-Coleman diagram” (Bunge 1996), which I now summarize in three points:

The researcher must:

• (1) Explain any macro phenomenon by identifying how macro conditions affect the micro level, that is, individuals.

• (2) Reconstruct the interactions between individuals activated by the macro context.

• (3) Study the mechanisms through which the interactions between individuals caused changes at the macro level, giving rise to the phenomenon studied.

Coleman is succinct when he summarizes his social theory in these few lines: “This involve[s] explaining behavior of a social system by means of three components: the effects of properties of the system on the constraints or orientations of actors; the actions of actors who are within the system; and the combination or interaction of those actions, bringing about the systemic behavior” (Coleman 1990, 27).

Coleman has made a formidable contribution to a theoretical and empirical research perspective known as “mechanism-based explanation” or analytical sociology, which attributes a central role to generative causal explanation. A mechanism is an irreducibly causal notion (Hedström and Ylikoski 2010, 50–51). The Coleman’s Boat allows you to open the black box of the revolution, showing what it contains—how its elements are causally linked and how each generates an effect, which in turn becomes a cause.

Causal Mechanism and Terrorism

To further explore the mechanism-based explanation, we will see how Donatella della Porta used it to explain the birth, persistence, and decline of terrorist organizations in Italy in the 1970s and beyond by analyzing the chain of generative events, known as “mechanisms,” a concatenation of generative effects connecting macro causes to aggregated effects (Mayntz 2004).

In Clandestine Political Violence, Donatella della Porta studies the causal mechanisms of radicalization. Della Porta regards mechanisms as chains of interaction that filter structural conditions and produce effects (della Porta 2013, 25). Specifically, Clandestine Political Violence studies the mechanisms that initiate a chain of interactions, marking the three fundamental phases of a violent underground movement: Birth, persistence, and decline. Della Porta wants to explain how the political system, that is, the macro context, influences and is influenced by the political actors, or micro context, in a chain of interdependent actions.

Regarding the birth of clandestine violence, there are three fundamental mechanisms. The first is escalating policing or state repression. Initially interested in reforms, social movements become radicalized when the state uses force extremely and indiscriminately. According to della Porta, political violence worldwide is connected to the state’s response against social movements in a sort of “macabre dance.”

The second mechanism is competitive escalation, the competition between the actors involved in the conflict, each of which contributes to increasing the level of confrontation more and more. Competitive escalation exists between opposing parties and even within the same political family. This includes groups with differing opinions on strategies and a desire to outperform one another. The rise of radicalization is often caused by moderate activists stepping back from their efforts as the conflict escalates, allowing more extreme activists to take over.

The third mechanism on which the birth of clandestine political violence depends is the activation of militant networks. Della Porta cites Marc Sageman’s research on small groups and uses socialization studies to explain the rise of radicalization (Sageman 2004).

Networks of friends, relatives, and political comrades play a vital role in recruiting in clandestine organizations. Such networks influence the representation of the outside world through group pressure.

The age of the militants is an element of considerable importance.

Those who belong to the first generation of rebels are more tied to the oldest political traditions. The founders of underground organizations were socialized into politically committed families, from which they acquired traditional values and narratives. The first generation of militants comes to violence gradually because they need time to break the bonds with the values received in the family.

The second generation of rebels, on the other hand, grows up in an environment that has already been radicalized by the first-generation militants and their underground organizations. Those of the second generation are socialized to violence as teenagers, go underground very young, and have fewer inhibitions toward more extreme actions. Second-generation militant networks emerge during collective action rather than being based on strong communities of friends and relatives that precede the emergence of clandestine political violence. Second-generation militants meet each other and establish bonds of solidarity in the struggle.

Once the three mechanisms underlying the emergence of clandestine political violence have been clarified, della Porta analyzes the mechanisms that guarantee its duration over time.

The first mechanism of persistence is organizational compartmentalization. The growth of repression and the reduction of popular support cause the growing closure of the organization in itself to resist the repression of governments. The clandestine organizations develop a logic based on a military conception of the clash with the state that increases their isolation from the surrounding world and other social movements.

The second mechanism that favors the persistence of clandestine violence is action militarization. Initially, organizations use violence to make their goals known and get media attention. However, when clandestine violence becomes extreme, it has two negative consequences. The first is the state’s repression, and the second is the moral indignation of the population. The more a clandestine group is isolated and suffers state repression, the more it abandons the objectives of propaganda and focuses on its survival. Italian terrorist groups of the right and left were increasingly raging against the magistrates, the police, and the military, but also against their militants accused of treason. With the passage of time and the growth of repression, they concentrated their forces more and more on the struggle against the state and against the alleged “internal enemies.”

The third mechanism is ideological encapsulation. Underground organizations develop a Manichean view of social relations. The world is divided into two categories, and an “evil essence” is attributed to the enemy. Ideologies over-simplify reality and tend to view problems in a highly abstract manner. Everything becomes black or white.

This chapter of Clandestine Political Violence presents a contradiction. On the one hand, della Porta places ideological encapsulation among the mechanisms that contribute to the persistence of clandestine violence; on the other hand, she denies that ideologies have causal power. In line with Clark McCauley and Sophia Moskalenko, della Porta is inclined to believe that ideologies are not a cause but a justification for extreme violence.

The fourth mechanism is the militant enclosure. Individuals who participate in political violence create deep emotional bonds with the organization. Friendship strengthens political commitment and the organization becomes a “family.” The emotional ties between political militants become stronger in dangerous situations and affect the representation of the world. All the information that the militants receive are “filtered” by the group, which condemns all forms of deviance. The “us versus them” mentality becomes more and more radical. As conformity grows, the willingness to question one’s ideas decreases, giving rise to the phenomenon of “cognitive closure,” which further increases radicalization. The enemy appears as an undifferentiated, abstract, and monolithic entity, which belongs to a category lower than that of man (Orsini 2011, 58–66). Seeing enemies as “pigs” helps not to suffer for their death. The image that activists have of the outside world is the product of the dynamics of small clandestine groups.

Regarding the end of clandestine political violence, della Porta observes that the primary cause of the decline is the arrest or killing of militants. However, their elimination does not explain why underground organizations attract fewer and fewer militants over time.

First, it is essential to initiate a moderate policy by the state, or de-escalating policing, that reduces the social conflict and, consequently, the amount of collective anger that clandestine organizations exploit to find new militants. The decision to leave the organization may depend on the effectiveness of the repression but also on the alternatives to clandestine life that are disclosed to the militants. Italian laws, which reduced the penalties for terrorists who abandoned the armed struggle, played an important role in defeating clandestine organizations. When faced with the decision of staying in an organization or facing death outside at the hands of the police, activists often feel like they have no choice but to stay in the group. However, suppose the state takes a more moderate line and provides benefits to those who defect, including protection from the possible revenge of former comrades. In that case, many terrorists may consider dissociating or collaborating with magistrates to provide useful information to crack down on the organization they were members of.

Another important mechanism is the internal crisis and the organizational disbandment. Underground organizations can provoke a reaction of disgust even in their members. Valerio Morucci, the head of the Roman column of the Red Brigades, had a crisis of conscience in the face of the decision to suppress Aldo Moro, which he had opposed, but also in the face of the killing of some comrades accused of treason.

Equally important is the mechanism of individual de-encapsulation or the individual’s escape from physical and cognitive encapsulation. This process becomes easier if individuals tired of the clandestine life are put in contact with each other to support and encourage each other. Loyalty to a clandestine organization depends on emotional ties with group members. The fear of losing the affection and esteem of one’s companions must be compensated by the affection and esteem of a new group that approves and supports the new life path.

Della Porta, like McCauley and Moskalenko (McCauley and Moskalenko 2011), also distinguishes three levels of analysis: The macro-system or the political context in which terrorism develops; the mesosystem, formed by radical organizations and the dynamics between these organizations and governments; and the microsystem, characterized by symbolic and affective interactions within the militant networks.

It follows that, to understand the birth of Italian terrorism in the 1970s, one should first study the dynamics of the political context (macro level). However, terrorist organizations, once formed, also operated on the basis of their dynamics, which can only be understood by conducting in-depth research on the organizations themselves (meso level). These, mainly due to the problems linked to clandestinity, became bureaucratized, and survival became their main requirement. Organizational problems took precedence over ends. Finally, the terrorists isolated themselves from their surroundings to survive the repression. Their life occurs within small groups characterized by face-to-face interactions that need to be studied specifically, focusing on individual motivations (micro level).

I summarize how della Porta explains the birth, persistence, and decline of terrorism in Italy in the 1970s and 1980s.

Macro level. In Italy, as in other countries, the second half of the 1970s saw the birth of protest movements. The workers and students gave rise to a great mobilization. In turn, the movements for change gave birth to counter-movements, and the struggle between the “old” and the “new” became dramatic. Italy was a young democracy, and the police were used to using force harshly against the opposition. In such a context, the social and political conflict quickly radicalized. Some groups fought to benefit from the economic boom’s new opportunities, while others fought not to lose their privileges. The social confrontation fostered a conservative turn in government. Many leftist militants judged the state’s reaction to be unfair and disproportionate and began to approve of the use of violence. Among the militants of the left there was an increasing belief that a coup of the extreme right was imminent, while among the militants of the right, the belief was spreading that they were at the dawn of a communist revolution (Della Porta 1995). Activists on both sides organized themselves militarily, and the enemy’s culture spread as absolute evil.

Meso level. Shifting the focus from the political system to the organizations, the leftist groups equipped themselves with a nucleus of militants, the so-called servizio d’ordine to face the charges of the police and the clashes with the neo-fascist militants in demonstrations. These squads, accustomed to physical confrontation, became increasingly radical and independent to the point of forming autonomous and clandestine groups. As time went on, they became increasingly isolated and solely dedicated to their own survival. Their efforts were channeled toward fighting against the state through acts of terrorism. Armed struggle was no longer a means but an end in itself. Many who initially sympathized with the early actions of the Red Brigades and other similar formations began to condemn their actions deemed too violent. Left and right terrorist groups lost the ability to intervene in the political context and could no longer find allies or recruits.

Micro level. After analyzing the political context and terrorist organizations, let’s focus on small-group emotional bonds. Far-left and far-right militants had participated in numerous clashes, and violence had become a central aspect of their daily life. The escalation also involved the type of weapons moving from the stones of the 1960s to the pistols of the 1970s. This growth in violence intensified the process of radicalization. Those on the opposite side were considered the “absolute evil,” while an all-encompassing emotional relationship was established with the members of one’s group. The need for secrecy strengthened the bond between group members, causing individuals to rely more on their peers due to fear of harm or arrest.

Giving up terrorism proved to be challenging as the organization was not only the sole provider of material resources but also the sole source of absolute truths. The terrorists continued to carry out murders and attacks, even though their militant actions no longer had any chance of achieving their initial objectives due to their isolation from society, which altered their relationship with reality.

Kruglanski’s Significance-Quest Theory

There are many ways to criticize the mechanism-based explanation approach. One of them is to explain the same social phenomenon, terrorism, with a different method. Criticizing one approach by exposing a different one looks pretty constructive.

Arie Kruglanski explained the phenomenon of terrorism with his significance-quest theory set out in his The Three Pillars of Radicalization, in collaboration with Jocelyn J. Bélanger and Roan Gunaratna (Kruglanski, Bélanger, and Gunaratna 2019). In the authors’ perspective, the development of terrorism by no means begins with state repression.

According to Kruglanski, the behavior of an individual is not always motivated by the rational choice theory, which suggests that individuals always act to maximize their own utility. Instead, individuals can be heavily influenced by their emotions and can be manipulated by terrorist organizations. Although individuals still possess rationality, their actions are largely influenced by their values and beliefs.

The three authors offer a psychological perspective on extremism as a general phenomenon of which radicalization leading to terrorism is just a particular case.

According to the “motivational imbalance theory,” individuals have some basic needs. Some pertain to fundamental biological concerns, including nutrition, hydration, rest, etc. Other basic needs are psychogenic. These are the needs for safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. Deprivation of such needs causes suffering and distress. That is why humans strive to fulfill their basic psychogenic needs, much as they do with respect to their basic physiological needs. According to the motivational imbalance theory, individuals tend to avoid behaviors that gratify only some needs while undermining others. For instance, one’s need for intimacy and relatedness may temper one’s need for achievement and competence, thus promoting a work-family balance.

Kruglanski, Belanger, and Gunaratna view violent extremism as merely one of different possible types of extremisms, including extreme diets, extreme sports, extreme (fatal) attractions to a variety of addictions (e.g., substances, behavior patterns), or selfless humanism or asceticism, all of which fit their conception of extremism. When a basic need becomes acutely dominant, motivational balance—which stands for “moderation”—is at risk. Because our mental (attentional) resources are limited, investing them in the dominant need withdraws them from other needs. Motivational imbalance comes at a cost. Temporarily suppressing some needs means that the constraints they normally exercise on behavior are released or removed, liberating formerly constrained behavior, resulting in extremism. The various extremisms have different contents, but they share a psychological core. This core consists of “motivational imbalance.” Individuals normally observe the norms and mores of their social groups and behave rationally, but, when “in love,” they begin to invest their mental resources in the dominant need and withdraw them from other needs. Under normal circumstances, what people eat is constrained by concerns of diet, health, and taste, but, when extremely starved, they eat even tasteless, fattening, or disgusting food. In sum: “The greater the imbalance the larger the set of behavioral options for gratifying the dominant need” (Kruglanski, Bélanger and Gunaratna 2019, 40).

Motivational imbalance verifies itself when one’s sole purpose is to obtain the object of their desire. Because people in general strive to maintain balance, extreme behavior is infrequent, and yet, it sometimes occurs. Why? In the case of violent extremism, terrorist organizations play a decisive role. Through their propaganda and rhetoric, as well as group pressure, charismatic leadership, and emotional appeals, they attempt to induce in individuals a motivational imbalance by appealing to values these persons hold sacred—such as honor, dignity, or duty. Becoming a terrorist requires the readiness to commit extreme acts of violence in service of a collective cause which, in turn, implicates the complete suppression of other concerns in their different life domains. Among the basic human needs, there is the fundamental desire to matter, to be someone, to have respect. Kruglanski, Belanger, and Gunaratna call such a general motivating force “quest for significance.” This quest constitutes a universal, human motivation variously labeled as the need for esteem, achievement, meaning, competence, control, etc. The overriding preoccupation of human life is the pursuit of reputation in the eyes of others. Scholars have identified many motives underlying engagement in terrorism, but there is just one major underlying motivation: The quest for personal significance.

Having made clear that the struggle for recognition is crucial to understanding radicalization leading to terrorism, Kruglanski, Belanger, and Gunaratna argue that for the significance quest to induce behavior, it must first be activated.

Activation of the significance quest can happen in one of three major ways: (a) Through a loss of significance or humiliation of some sort; (b) through an anticipated (or threatened) significance loss; or (c) through an opportunity for significance gain.

Personally based significance loss is caused by a personal failure, humiliation, or due to an affront to one’s social identity that one shares with others in one’s group. Some Palestinian women, who had suffered some kind of stigma, were motivated to volunteer for a socially venerated cause to gain respect. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the two brothers who perpetrated the Boston Marathon bombing of April 2013, was poorly assimilated and rather marginalized in America. He entertained dreams of glory and tried to become a hero or a martyr according to his extremist ideology.

By making reference to Durkheim, and his concept of anomie, Kruglanski, Belanger, and Gunaratna explain that, in some cases, individual significance loss can be the result of general, economic, social, and political conditions prevailing in a given state, including internecine conflict, instability, insecurity, and the government’s failure to provide order. When the state is unable to provide the means for its citizens to attain their goals, anomie is the result. Terrorist organizations can take advantage of the feeling of helplessness and hence of personal insignificance affecting many individuals.

Socially based significance loss is caused by the humiliation of one’s group and the trampling of its sacred values. Islamophobia from native residents makes many Muslim immigrants in Europe feel discriminated and disrespected. Terrorist propagandists of Al-Qaeda and its affiliates are often effective at exploiting the significance loss arousing from discrimination and humiliation.

Avoidance of significance loss is the mere threat of significance loss that often motivates extreme actions intended to prevent it. Some Japanese kamikaze of World War II did not want to die, nor did they expect heavenly rewards for their extreme gesture. Yet had they refused the mission, unbearable shame and humiliation would have destroyed their dignity and personal significance. They were apparently motivated to crash their planes into US vessels in order to avoid significance loss.

Opportunity for significance gain is the opportunity for tremendous significance gain as a reward for engaging in terrorist activities. This is the case of Muhammad Atta, one of the ringleaders of the September 11 attacks, who is regarded as a hero by the transnational jihad movement for having been the pilot of the first plane that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Kruglanski, Belanger, and Gunaratna attach great importance to ideological narrative in producing violent extremism. According to the significance-quest theory, ideology is crucial. Once activated, the quest for significance can push individuals in different directions. There are many ways to gain respect and significance. When it comes to explaining the decision to join a terrorist organization, ideology shows a causal power. In their book The Three Pillars of Radicalization, published in 2019, Kruglanski, Belanger, and Gunaratna state that radical ideology has the power to push individuals toward violent radicalization.

In Kruglanski, Belanger, and Gunaratna’s own words: “When the quest for significance is activated, whether a prosocial or antisocial behavior is enacted depends on the ideological narrative that identifies the means that may lead to significance attainment. Effecting a shift from a terrorism-justifying ideology to one that identifies alternative routes to significance seems essential to eradicating violence” (Kruglanski, Bélanger and Gunaratna 2019, 50).

Those who embrace a prosocial ideology are averse to gratifying the burning desire for significance by carrying out extreme violence. It turns out that it is not the quest for significance as such that drives violence. Violence is driven by the combination of three “pillars.” They are: Needs, Narratives, and Networks that constitute the three “Ns” of radicalization. Having dealt with the need to matter, and the role of radical narratives in forging the link between violence and significance, it is time to address the role that networks play in the radicalization process. Networks have the function to serve as conduits through which individuals get acquainted with, and embrace, the violent ideology that guides their attempts to restore their sense of significance. Many al-Qaeda and Isis attacks in the West have demonstrated how important family members can be in forming close-knit radical networks, collaborating in the perpetration of violent attacks. The Kouachi brothers, for example, were involved in the Paris attacks of November 2015; the Bakraqui brothers were among the perpetrators of the March 2016 attacks in Brussels; the Tsarnaev brothers carried out the Boston marathon massacre in April 2013; and Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik carried out the San Bernardino killings in December 2015. Even when they focus on the networks, Kruglanski, Belanger, and Gunaratna always remember that ideology plays a decisive role by clarifying that a social network can promote violent extremism only if its members embrace a radical ideology.

Networks with a moderate narrative incompatible with violence are known to facilitate individuals’ exit from violent movements. That is the reason why the Saudi Ministry of the Interior initiated, in 2004, a deradicalization program based on the use of families, with a moderate and peaceful worldview, to pull members back from radical Islam. Involvement of militants’ families also characterized the successful Singaporean deradicalization program, initiated in 2001. In addition to being a reference that serves as an epistemic authority for individuals, the social network also fulfills a “rewarding function.” It dispenses respect and appreciation to individuals who are seeking significance gain. An example of this is Velupillai Prabhakaran, the venerated leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a militant organization that sought to create an independent Tamil state in the north and east of Sri Lanka who used to invite the Sri Lankan members of the Black Tigers suicide squad to a one-on-one dinner with him and his top lieutenants.

In sum, the quest for significance theory identifies the quest for personal significance as the fundamental human need that typically underlies violent extremism. It can be summarized as follows: (1) The need that comes from the quest for personal significance defines the end—to have respect; (2) the narrative (or ideology) explains that significance has to be gained by committing a terror attack; and (3) the network validates the violence significance nexus and dispenses respect and significance for those who have embraced a violent ideology. The three Ns of radicalization are Needs, Narratives, and Networks.

Petersen’s Sociology of Emotions

Constructive criticism of rational choice theory also comes from Roger Petersen’s sociology of emotions (Turner and Stets 2005; Scott 2015).

Roger Petersen is among the contemporary authors who have drawn attention to the power of emotions in political and social life. Petersen’s social actors are not driven very much by rational economic behavior. They get in through social norms and have moral obligations to other family or community members. They are involved in emotions.

According to Petersen, first, emotions create an urge to act on a particular desire and can turn some issues into obsessions.

Second, when emotions are activated, they impact how people gather information. Information plays a crucial role in determining whether or not we take action, and manipulating information is equivalent to manipulating individuals. Emotions become: “Powerful experiential information” in evaluating situations and objects.

Third, emotions can affect our beliefs: “The same individual with the same information may develop one belief under the sway of one emotion and a different belief under the influence of a different emotion” (Petersen 2020, 609).

Petersen’s theory of emotions is complex, but, in a nutshell, he believes that emotions intervene in forming preferences, collecting information, and constructing beliefs (Petersen 2002, 2004, 2011, 2017, 2020).

The Social Exchange Theory

George Homans’s social exchange theory greatly influenced Coleman’s ideas.

Born in 1910 in the Back Bay district of Boston, Homans came from one of the city’s most prestigious families. He taught sociology and medieval history at Harvard since 1939 and served in the US Army during World War II. In 1964, Homans was elected president of the American Sociological Association, retired from teaching in 1980, and died in 1989.

Among his books are An Introduction to Pareto: His Sociology (1934), The Human Group (Homans 1950), and Sentiments and Activities: Essays in Social Science (1962). In 1984, he published his autobiography, Coming to My Senses (Homans 1984). He was a frank and direct man. At the end of a speech to celebrate the founding of the Social Relations Department, in which Parsons had spoken of the high and noble intellectual convergences that had animated that project, Homans said to him: “Now, Talcott, that’s not the way I remember it at all. The department was founded because of hate, and I mean personal hate” (Vogel 1990, 14). Homans recalled the bad relations between Parsons and Sorokin, which I mentioned in the chapter on functionalism, and the equally bad ones among other colleagues.

In this chapter, I will deal primarily with Homans’s Social Behavior, published in 1961 and revised in 1974 (Homans 1974).

Before studying the main contents of this work, I must review the law of diminishing marginal utility, a pillar of the social exchange theory, and which we find in all the protagonists of this chapter, including Mearsheimer.

It is useful to take the first step from this theory for two reasons: First, it makes us immediately enter into Homans’s logic, and second, it reminds us that the concept of “homo oeconomicus”—the ideal economic human who makes decisions and takes actions based on its desire to maximize its benefits—is essential in all of the authors we are discussing in this chapter.

Marginal Utility and Social Exchange

The theory of marginal utility starts from the observation that the individual receives pleasure or satisfaction from consuming goods and services called “utility” by economic science.

Let’s try to apply this theory to social life and imagine a writer receiving an invitation to a prestigious conference as an authoritative speaker. The first invitations to conferences give him/her considerable pleasure, which progressively decreases as the number of invitations increases. Nineteenth-century economists believed that pleasure was measurable. Based on that tradition, let’s imagine that the first invitation to the conference gives our actor a utility equal to 10; the second a minor pleasure equal to 9; the third a utility of 7.50, and so on. When the individual is completely satisfied, each invitation to a new conference will give him/her zero utility. Indeed, it could even happen that he/she has the annoyance of inventing an excuse to justify his/her refusal.

The following pictures can represent all this (Fig. 13.8):

Fig. 13.8

Theory of marginal utility applied. (Source: Palmerio 1979 modified by Orsini)

The speaker is already satisfied after the sixth invitation, so the seventh one gives him zero utility. Now let’s consider the speaker after he/she has received only two invitations. The total utility he/she has enjoyed now is 10 + 9 = 19; the utility of the last invitation is 9.

Let’s consider the writer after he/she has received three invitations. The total utility is now 10 + 9 + 7.50 = 26.50. On the other hand, the utility of the last invitation is 7.50. If we continue this way until the 6th invitation, we see that, as the individual participates in the events, the total utility he/she enjoys increases. However, if we evaluate the utility provided to the individual after every invitation, we can observe a decrease in utility with each subsequent invitation. The utility of the last invitation, and relative participation in the conference, is called “marginal utility.” The total utility grows as the individual receives the invitations and speaks as a speaker, but the marginal utility decreases. Total utility increases, along with symbolic capital, as Bourdieu would call it, but marginal utility decreases. Marginal utility increases but gradually decreases.

Therefore, total utility is the pleasure that the individual derives from consuming or possessing a given quantity of a good; marginal utility is the pleasure that the subject derives from the last dose of a good. Total utility is increasing, while marginal utility is decreasing.

We can graphically represent what has been said so far. If we report participation in conferences as invited speakers on the abscissa and total utility on the ordinate, we have the following diagram (Fig. 13.9).

Fig. 13.9

Total utility scheme. (Source: Palmerio 1979 modified by Orsini)

If, on the other hand, we report participation in conferences as invited speakers on the abscissa but marginal utility on the ordinate, we have the following graph (Fig. 13.10).

Fig. 13.10

Marginal utility scheme. (Source: Palmerio 1979 modified by Orsini)

What can we deduce from the two diagrams?

As the number of invitations to conferences as a speaker increases, the total utility grows, but to a lesser extent, at a decreasing rate. The marginal utility, therefore, is decreasing.

When the curve of Fig. 13.2 becomes horizontal (from the 6th to the 7th invitation), the total utility is maximum, and the marginal utility is equal to 0. If conference participation is pushed beyond this point, total utility decreases, and marginal utility becomes negative.

The person’s preferences give the position and steepness of the curves and vary from person to person. Still, the trend of the curves is the same for any individual since the law of diminishing marginal utility is valid for all.

These graphs are basic and become more and more complex as the individual consumes more goods or aspires to obtain more resources simultaneously. Economists use mathematical formulas and indifference curves to graphically represent the consumer’s equilibrium. Still, I am only interested in grasping the underlying logic of the various approaches of the theory of rational choice, according to which the individual, whether it is a matter of getting married, divorced, having children, or entering college, continuously calculates what is useful for it based on its subjective preferences. Not only material goods, such as food but also intangible ones, such as beauty, are exchanged according to the law of supply and demand. For example, many note that it is common for rich and powerful men to have younger and more beautiful women. This happens because beauty is a commodity and, as such, has a high price, which is exchanged for another equally rare and precious commodity, such as money and power. Although Elizabeth Aura McClintock eliminates nearly all evidence of beauty-status exchange after controlling for matching (McClintock 2014), I mention it because it helps grasp the typical reasoning behind the social exchange theory assuming a gendered exchange in which women trade beauty for men’s status.

Homans’s Propositions

According to Homans (1910–1989), an admirer of Pareto (Homans & Curtis [1934] 1970), society is a network of exchanges based on cost-benefit analysis. Individuals interact to exchange tangible and intangible goods to satisfy their needs, which can be practical, such as services, or of a psychological nature, such as love, prestige, recognition, or approval (Treviño 2006). We have already encountered this idea in Simmel, but Homans, under Skinner’s influence, mutilates a fundamental element: The complexity of subjective interpretation. Homans called himself a “psychological reductionist” and argued, under the influence of Pareto, that the propositions of sociology should logically derive from the general propositions of psychology. However, it should be noted that Homans refers to the behavioral psychology of his friend Skinner.

Not surprisingly, Social Behavior opens not with a theory about the man but with a theory about the pigeon whose behavior is conditioned by the rewards it receives in the laboratory. Researchers feed pigeons to make them repeat certain actions. The pigeon makes no reasoning. It just acts to get the food.

Skinner dealt with the pigeon’s behavior and not with how the pigeon learned to behave according to the researchers’ wishes.

Skinner dealt with the pigeon’s behavior and not how the pigeon learned to behave. Homans intends to proceed exactly like Skinner. He is less interested in how men learn what they do than what they do after learning it. Homans argues that a person’s behavior is influenced by how he has been rewarded in the past, based on the following principles:

First, behaviors that are frequently rewarded are more likely to be repeated.

Second, the more a certain environment is linked to rewarded behavior, the more likely it is that that environment is sought-after.

Third, if the reward for a certain behavior is more valuable, there is a higher chance that the behavior will be repeated.

Fourth, the more frequently our needs and desires are fulfilled, the less we appreciate any additional rewards.

Homans also thinks that when a behavior does not receive the expected reward or receives an unexpected punishment, the individual goes into anger and tends to assume an aggressive attitude.

Homans’s idea of power is intriguing because he sees it as the capacity to provide valuable performances, which are rare and highly sought-after.

Thanks to the exchange, anyone possessing a highly demanded commodity has power over others. However, there are exceptions. It is not enough to have a unique whistling style to use as a means of influence unless it is required for musical performance (Homans 1974, 75). Using economic theory, Homans concludes that the relationship between supply and demand determines the value of a performance.

Blau and the Dynamics of Bureaucracy

Peter Blau (1918–2002) earned his doctorate from Columbia University in 1952 while being mentored by Merton. He served as a sociology professor at the University of Chicago from 1953 to 1970 when he returned to Columbia University as a professor emeritus. In 1973, he was elected president of the American Sociological Association. Born in Vienna into a Jewish family, his youth was plagued by Nazism. At seventeen, he was arrested and sentenced to ten years for writing articles and distributing a clandestine socialist newspaper against the fascist government in Austria led by Kurt Schuschnigg (1934–1938). He did not serve his sentence thanks to an amnesty decided by the Austrian Chancellor to celebrate the successes of Nazism. After the Nazi annexation of Austria, he escaped but was arrested on the border with Czechoslovakia, where he was held in custody for three months and tortured. Released, he took refuge in Prague, where he lived for a year. Hitler also invaded Czechoslovakia and Blau fled to France, where he was arrested and sent to a labor camp in Bordeaux. Rescued, he embarked for the United States. His parents died in Auschwitz in May 1942, when Blau earned his first degree. He began making public speeches in favor of the US Army landing in Europe, in which he enlisted for four years. Thanks to his knowledge of German, he was employed in interrogations against the Nazis (Reva Blau 2010).

His first book is The Dynamics of Bureaucracy, published in 1955, a study of interpersonal relationships in two government agencies, in which he discovers that an informal internal group controls the pace of work, made up of expert consultants, which indicate what to do to newcomers, receiving in return respect, consideration, and deference that is the basis of superior status in the group (Blau 1963, 140). Blau also focuses on the commitment with which employees try to impress each other during their first meetings to raise their exchange value and make themselves desirable.

Referring to Homans, Blau observed that highly skilled officials tend to rely on their technical knowledge to assimilate into the workplace, leading them to spend less time building social relationships with colleagues. In contrast, less competent officials put more effort into expanding their circle of friends and increasing interactions with their peers. Blau explains that individuals with rare skills find it easy to integrate into their workplace since they are in high demand and often approached by others who require their expertise.

A skilled official with valuable knowledge is highly respected, and being seen with them is considered an achievement. On the other hand, less qualified colleagues must build strong interpersonal relationships to achieve a good level of integration in the workplace.

To sum it up, it’s a social exchange where individuals offer various resources. Everyone desires to feel included, but some individuals exchange their skills for inclusion, while others offer sympathy, kindness, and companionship.

Blau considers two main variables in his case study: The level of efficiency and the frequency of interaction.

Colleagues tend to reach out more frequently to highly efficient officials than less efficient ones. According to Blau’s data, the former are contacted every 11 minutes on average, while the latter are contacted every 19 minutes. Blau recorded all the contacts that each member of Sector Y had had with anyone else in the office during 30.5 hours of sociological observation. He did not take into account, in the overall account, either the length or the content of the exchange. The total number of interactions observed was 2189 (Blau 1963, 145). On average, one official had 8.3 contacts per hour, 5.1 of which were meetings with senior industry officials. Interactions included greetings, short private conversations, consultations, and other official activities.

Blau identified four simple facts:

• (1) The total number of contacts that an individual had per hour.

• (2) The number of contacts that an individual caused per hour.

• (3) The number of contacts each individual received per hour (the contacts caused by the other participant in the exchange).

• (4) The proportion of total contacts caused by the individual himself, which provides an index of his initiative in social interaction.

From this research by Blau, we can deduce that the most sociable and affable colleagues in the workplace are often the least talented, who try to allay their anxieties, deriving from professional deficiencies or lack of sought-after acquaintances, increasing the circle of friends around them with a considerable investment of time in social relations, including participation in all worldly, playful, and recreational events. As is evident, this is a purely sociological approach. The way of interacting is not traced back to character or personality but to the role and resources available to the individual in the workplace. In this regard, the observations made about lunchtime interactions in the canteen are worth noting. Blau suggests it’s the best opportunity to establish informal connections with colleagues.

Many officials attached great importance to this moment of camaraderie and were careful to get back to the office before noon so as not to be alone for lunch. Blau builds an index of the extent of each official’s informal relationships based on the recording of all lunch meetings over two weeks, finding that less competent officials tended to have more extensive informal relationships than others. The data shows a contradiction: Why do less competent and less coveted colleagues have more informal interactions than competent and highly coveted experts? Since the latter is more sought-after and requested than the former, the data should be reversed.

Blau explains this anomaly by distinguishing between relationships in free time and relationships in the office.

In their free time, the less experienced are, in fact, freer to interact and give their best in building social relationships. However, the fact that the less competent officials have many friends does not mean that once they are back in the office, they will be contacted by their colleagues. An official can have many relationships in his/her spare time and relatively few relationships in the office. Blau’s explanation is endowed with logical rigor. If we have a colleague who makes us laugh and have fun, we will look for him/her in places where it is allowed to amuse ourselves, for example in the canteen, and not in the office, where you need to work. Blau finds an inversely proportional relationship between the quality of an official’s skills and the number of his/her informal relationships. In other words, the greater the skills of the official, the less informal relations he/she has.

Blau grasps the exceptions. A very competent official, for example, was particularly attentive to the care of informal relationships and, not surprisingly, was the most loved and respected of all, to the point of becoming the informal head of the working group. His work advice was followed with diligence, and he also acted as representative and guardian of the interests of colleagues, who, on occasion, defended, justifying their alleged shortcomings.

Exchange and Power in Social Life

Exchange and Power in Social Life, published in 1964, is Blau’s main contribution to social exchange theory (Blau 1964).

His goal, now, is not empirical research but identifying a series of general principles to analyze all social relationships. Once the theory has been developed, Blau intends to use it to explain the micro-macro link, the transition from face-to-face interaction between two individuals to constructing macro-structures.

The law of diminishing returns is key to Blau’s book.

When one person provides valuable services to another person, the other person is obligated to provide benefits in return. This is a mutual obligation that both parties must fulfill. When both parties place a value on what they receive from each other, they are more likely to offer additional services to encourage the other to increase their offer and avoid going into debt. However, as they receive more care than they originally required, their need for further assistance typically decreases. The profit from the exchange decreases with the number of exchanges. In technical terms, the marginal utility of increasing benefits eventually decreases. When we need help at work, expert assistance for five minutes is valuable, and the next five minutes are just as important. However, once we have received assistance for half an hour, additional five minutes of the expert’s time may be less important than the first five. At this point, the expense of acquiring more benefits is no longer justified by their decreasing satisfaction level.

Blau has identified a series of general principles, some of which are taken from Homans:

First, the expected profit determines the behavior. An action is discouraged or encouraged depending on whether the individual expects to receive costs or benefits. The expected profit minus the costs determines the profit. The individual interacts with those people from whom he/she expects to receive the greatest rewards, ranging from the simple pleasure of being together to gains of another nature. Among the interaction costs, the individual also calculates the respect, subordination, and deference he/she must give. Under normal circumstances, interacting with people to whom you must be very deferential has a high cost and a low income. A similar argument applies to the interaction between men and women. Dating a highly sought-after and courted woman can be distressing for a man with few resources to exchange and, therefore, would find himself in strong subordination. This helps to understand why people tend to interact with people of roughly equivalent status. Even in friendship, an exchange that is too unbalanced in deference causes the weaker party to leave the relationship or not establish it at all. Blau recovers Homan’s thesis on marginal utility: A woman with many suitors will have little or no use in starting a new friendship with an ordinary man. However, these principles have exceptions. In some professional settings, befriending those of lower status can be difficult to avoid.

The second is the principle of reciprocity.

Blau wonders why people don’t just collect rewards and disappear without giving anything in return. Blau replies that exchange is a social process governed by the norm of reciprocity. Any transgression of this rule entails a negative sanction on the part of the group. The fact that, in social exchange, unlike economic ones, reciprocity does not provide for a precise definition of which object is to be returned means that the exchange performs an important integrative function: Being grateful for having received a gift implies the maintenance of a bond over time, which will result in a beneficial behavior of the debtor. In social exchanges, reciprocity doesn’t have a specific definition of the item to be returned unlike in economic exchanges. This means that the exchange performs an important integrative function, as being grateful for receiving a gift helps maintain a strong bond over time, resulting in beneficial behavior from the debtor. If the debtor violates the obligation of reciprocity, he/she will be unable to expect other future gifts, causing the creditor’s anger; if he/she returns the trust, he/she will renew the bond with the benefactor. The principle of reciprocity underlies all interactions.

Third is the fair exchange norm. According to Blau, people get angry when they think someone has gotten more rewards than they deserve and feel guilty when they think they are getting an unfair return for a given service. The fair exchange norm provides that everyone gets the reward they deserve. It is a very different rule from what Marx assumed for a communist society, according to which everyone would receive according to their needs. According to Blau, whoever gives more deserves more in terms of prestige, money, or power.

Fourth, balanced exchanges in some social relationships tend to produce unbalanced exchanges in other relationships.

What does it mean?

When individuals enter into a relationship, they are concerned about exchanging in a balanced way, but this requires an investment of resources that they must subtract from other relationships. It follows that the search for balance, on the one hand, produces an imbalance on the other, which can trigger a conflictual dynamic. Let me give you an example. Consider a student who has left home to attend university. The student’s new peers may ask for time to engage in activities together or help with any challenges they may face. However, this would mean taking time away from friends and family back home. Time is a valuable resource, and it can lead to disagreements and conflicts when it’s fought over.

Conflict plays an important role in Blau’s theory. Even anger and aggression can be exchanged on the basis of the principle of reciprocity. Discharging one’s anger on a friend, accusing him/her of violating the rule of reciprocity, means inflicting a cost on him/her. The friend struck by anger will be forced to make a new cost-benefit calculation to evaluate whether it is still beneficial to maintain the friendship, as the relationship’s benefits may be decreasing.

In summary, if an exchange between two people is not balanced, then one of the two is in a subordinate position. The imbalance in the exchange can arise suddenly or gradually, accidentally or intentionally. In other cases, however, the relationship is born unbalanced. This is the case of the unbalanced relationship between two lovers, in which one of the two proves to have a minor utility in maintaining the union. Blau mentions the attractive woman who, not romantically involved, takes advantage of the unequal exchange to exploit the man she is linked to economically, but also the man who subjugates the woman sexually. By making her fear he might leave her at any time or stop looking for her at will, the man can bend the woman’s resistance and win her sexual favors. When someone is deeply in love with another person, he/she often feels a strong desire to please him/her. However, the less invested person in the relationship has an advantage, as they are not as dependent on the other person and, therefore, have more power. “How valuable a woman is as a love object to a man depends to a considerable extent on her apparent popularity with other men” (Blau 1964, 79). Beauty is a source of power, like money.

The Classification of the Rewards

Another contribution from Blau concerns the classification of the type of rewards that individuals can give in a relationship. The most formidable rewards include money, respect, esteem, and obedience.

Money is the least expendable means in social relations. We hardly ever buy the friendship or company of others. However, it could be observed that there are various strategies for bringing others closer to us by using money in daily life. The wealthy individual can organize parties, pay for dinners and aperitifs, and much more. In this case, the money is used mostly indirectly. It is not given directly to the person to get him/her into a relationship, but the person is placed in a position to benefit from it. However, Blau believes that the last three are the most used rewards in life in society.

As for esteem and respect, two specific types of social approval, Blau refers to giving deference to others. One effective strategy for someone with a lower social status to approach someone with a higher social status is to engage them in an exchange relationship based on giving deference. This approach is widely used and has proven to be effective. The success of such a strategy, however, depends on various factors. One is the law of diminishing returns, which never leaves the scene. If someone is already highly respected, he/she may not find much value in starting a relationship with someone of lower status. He/she already receives a lot of deference and any additional amount may have little to no value for him/her. However, if the person lacks admirers or has lost them, they may find satisfaction in accepting the respect of a newcomer. Both the esteemed man and the attractive woman face the same situation of having multiple admirers to choose from. They tend to favor the ones with the highest prestige because the value of esteem varies depending on its source. Getting recognition from a renowned intellectual is different from getting recognition from a laborer. Both types of recognition are valuable, but the recognition from the intellectual has a higher social value compared to the recognition from the laborer. Let’s revisit the chapter on Comte for a moment. Coser’s critique wasn’t that Comte was being respected but that people of low social status respected him. Blau’s thoughts on this topic are worth considering as well. The Comte story shows that not all forms of respect lead to an increase in social status. Some types of respect can harm one’s social standing, and others can enhance it.

Finally, obedience is the last resort. If a person has no other valuable items to exchange, he/she can submit him/herself. Submission can have a gradation and range from prostration to dignified obedience. This variation generally depends on who receives the obedience and the value the latter attributes to a further quantity of this good. Once again, the law of decreasing marginality is the tip of the balance. The relationship between those who obey and those who are obeyed depends on their personality and values. However, the theory of exchange, influenced by Skinner’s behaviorism, does not focus on introspection. Although the authority guides the relationship with the subordinates, social life can reserve interesting surprises. It may happen that the superior prostrates him/herself to the subordinates due to a moment of particular difficulty in which he/she sees his/her personal following vanish. It often happens to the powerful who fall from grace. But even these paradoxical situations can only be very transitory since the subordinates will no longer find it convenient to offer their obedience to a superior who has lost all power. While the prostration of the obedient can become permanent, that of the superior is only transitory.

The combination of supply and demand for resources creates the following alternatives:

• (1) The scarcer the sources of reward for actor A, the more actor A will depend on a given reward source. Let me give you an example. If a man is distressed and receives help from only one charitable organization, that organization may become his sole source of support and understanding.

• (2) The more different types of rewards that actor A receives from a particular source, the more actor A is dependent on that source. This principle is not very different from the first. If the man in distress receives many rewards from a single charitable institution, he/she will be linked to that institution by many tentacles.

• (3) The greater the actor’s uncertainty about the possibility that a particular situation will provide him/her with a reward, and the fewer alternatives available to him/her to receive this reward from alternative subjects, the more actor A is in a condition of dependence. This is a common scenario where a person feels he/she has no other options. Despite uncertainty about potential rewards, they become heavily reliant on the situation.

Let’s try to summarize some decisive points.

For Blau, the social exchange performs two fundamental functions: To create bonds of friendship and power relations. Blau states that the ability to manage impressions and, therefore, to appear in a positive light in the eyes of others is important because it raises the individual’s exchange value. Blau notes that friendships typically form between individuals who share an equal or similar social status. In the workplace, directors often show more kindness to their secretaries than their colleagues. This is because they may worry that colleagues could take advantage of their friendship to make requests or try to establish an equal relationship, which could undermine the hierarchical relationship. Blau also analyzes the social exchange in love relationships and observes that status equality among members is present in both love and friendship. Women who are highly desired by men often take their time before committing. This is because they have plenty of options and don’t want to rush into a decision. They also want to maintain their desirability and keep their value high by appearing in demand.

Blau aims to explain how macro-structures are formed through micro-interactions between individuals involved in a continuous exchange of favors, sentiments, services, and goods. He agrees that social structures emerge from the interactions between individuals. Still, he also shares Durkheim’s belief that once these structures are formed, they exert a coercive power influence on their anonymous creators.

An institution takes its first steps when a person finds it convenient to obey. The exchange between the superior and the subordinate creates the embryo of what will later become a social structure through a broader aggregation process and inclusion of individuals and groups. Power emerges from below, from the encounter between those who offer services and those who offer obedience. This type of exchange has been the basis of social organization since the dawn of humanity.

This perspective suggests that the first humans emerged from caves by exchanging scarce resources. Primitive humans initiated a dynamic of obedience based on this exchange, which eventually led to the creation of a higher authority. This authority centralized power and built entire civilizations. Blau’s interest in the micro-macro link is expressed on the first page of Exchange and Power in Social Life, where he writes that his book aims to contribute a theory of social structure that derive complex from simpler processes avoiding the reductionist fallacy of ignoring emergent properties (Blau 1964, XI). Everything about social life emerges from the exchange, even the moral norms. It was not moral norms that gave birth to the exchange; it was the exchange that gave birth to moral norms (Blau 1964, 91–93).

Randall Collins’s Criticism of Blau

I will begin by summarizing Collins’s criticism and then proceed to present my criticism of Collins’s critique. I aim to defend Blau against the criticism that his social exchange theory did not adequately consider power, conflict, and coercion.

Blau emphasizes the significance of competent leaders in the workplace. Leaders are a necessary resource for subordinates, who would otherwise lose their jobs or struggle to find employment without guidance.

What is wrong with this interpretation?

According to Collins, Blau’s analysis does not account for the role of money. It would be very simple to explain the birth of an organization by imagining that a rich man invests his/her money to ensure obedience.

In Collins’s view, Blau feared that by emphasizing the role of money and private property, he would make his model too similar to that of Marx, which was not congenial to him. If he had focused on owning money, Blau would have had to explain why the capitalists have so much money and property and workers nothing. Blau could have replied that the capitalists got rich with the services they offered. But in a capitalist society—Collins continues—such a response based on the elementary exchange would appear implausible. In sum, Blau avoided dealing with Marx’s competing explanation.

Let me summarize Blau’s thesis to understand Collins’s critique better.

According to Blau: (a) Power is gained through an exchange where one person offers a service that the other person desires, and in return, the other person can only provide obedience; (b) the provider must have exclusive access to the rewards offered. This means there are no other options available for obtaining those rewards; (c) the rewards must be highly desired by those who can only offer obedience.

Collins does not express himself in these terms. Still, the criticism he addresses to Blau is that he is ideological; that is, he has provided a representation of society pleasing to the capitalist bourgeoisie. The world of work Blau portrays is a fundamentally fair system. Leaders deserve their power because they offer expert guidance and specialized services to a group that may lack the necessary knowledge or skills to provide for itself. Blau does not explain how the employers acquired their wealth. He avoids discussing the unequal distribution of money between capitalist employers and propertyless workers. The assertion that leaders obtained earnings by procuring services is highly implausible in a capitalist society with complex property relations (Collins 1988, 347).

Conflict and Social Exchange

Is Blau’s social exchange theory of power truly as peaceful and cooperative as it seems? Does Blau give little space to conflict and the coercive role of power?

I want to document a different thesis.

Blau attributes anything but negligible weight to the conflict. Indeed, it could even be said that his society is pervaded by conflict, which, in Blau’s book, appears to come in to a weak version, in which rewards are gained by exchanging consensually, and a strong version, in which rewards are extorted by coercion, giving rise to protest movements, which can turn into revolutions.

In chapter IX, entitled “Opposition,” Blau develops an overall line of reasoning, which could easily place him in the best tradition of the sociology of conflict. Blau, far from an irenic conception of society, even goes so far as to provide a moral justification for popular uprisings against power in cases where this is based on an unjust and ungenerous exchange.

Blau opens chapter IX by citing a religious precept, which has few equals for the harshness with which it justifies violence. It deals with the passage from Leviticus on the moral duty of revenge: “And if a man causes a blemish in his neighbor; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him; Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: As he has caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again” (Blau 1964, 224). Immediately afterward, Blau writes a poignant passage in which he indicates cases where violence against power appears justifiable and approvable to him. He cites Machiavelli, indicating him as one of his intellectual points of reference.

One of Blau’s theses is that power manages to obtain readiness to obey when it is fair and generous. On the other hand, opposition movements and ideologies that delegitimize authority arise when power is perceived as unjust and ungenerous. In short, under normal conditions, society is governed by fair exchange, a give and take, which tends to balance, even in the relationship between capitalists and workers.

Blau’s exchange society appears besieged by conflicts. From a careful reading of Exchange and Power in Social Life, it emerges how Blau does not conceive of all social life as an exchange or the individual as a purely rational animal.

Blau’s reflection highlights the significant role that hatred can play as a tool for social change, making it an intriguing point worth exploring.

In the circumstances to be specified, hatred becomes an end in itself; it assumes an absolute value and is transformed into the measure of all things to the point of overwhelming the logic of exchange. When hatred takes hold of a collective movement, individuals can sacrifice their interests to satisfy a pure desire for revenge. In these cases, hatred subverts the rational laws of exchange. Some people are willing to give up the material possessions they’ve acquired over a lifetime just to witness someone they dislike suffer.

Some might argue that hatred is a component of interpersonal exchange, where one person relinquishes all his/her possessions in return for the other person’s suffering. However, this argument is not tenable for two primary reasons.

The first reason is that the exchange implies reciprocity. When one party seeks to harm the other, reciprocity no longer applies.

The second reason is that exchange is a relational phenomenon, which implies the will of at least two people to enter into a relationship. When there is an exchange, it means both parties are willing to trade with the expectation of receiving something in return. Destroying or killing is not exchanging. According to Blau, not all social behavior can be defined as exchange. Otherwise, the concept loses its unique meaning: “People do things for fear of other men or for fear of God or for fear of their conscience, and nothing is gained by trying to force such action into a conceptual framework of exchange” (Blau 1964, 89).

Blau mentions two cases that cannot be classified as exchange.

The first case is the man who gives money to another man under the threat of a gun. It looks like an exchange, life in exchange for money, but it is not: Blau denies that extortion is a case of exchange.

The second case is the man who gives money to a poor person. It looks like an exchange, charity in exchange for inner gratification, but it is not: Blau denies that conformity to one’s inner values is an exchange. An exchange is such if the man gives his/her money to the poor in exchange for something, for example, gratitude or deference.

Blau recalls the studies on relative deprivation in Samuel A. Stouffer’s book, The American Soldier published in 1949 (Stouffer 1949), and states that a missed reward can be experienced as a punishment. The desire to punish one’s neighbor emerges not only in tragic situations, characterized by absolute deprivation, but also in ordinary situations of everyday life. Conflict, with its potential for hatred and violence, is present, in a latent state, in all situations and in all social contexts. Blau portrays social life as an arena full of latent or manifest conflicts that can arise even in the most peaceful environments.

Blau wants to clarify that it is not hunger that pushes the masses to revolt but the conviction of being victims of an unjust and ungenerous exchange. If the poor become too poor, they rebel; if, however, they improve their economic conditions, it is the social stratum immediately above them that rebels. Blau also uses the theory of relative deprivation to explain the birth of fascism and its consolidation due to the support of the lower-middle classes, fearful of the economic and social rise of the underlying social classes.

Blau writes:

The interpretation these findings suggest is that left-wing opposition is a reaction to serious deprivation experienced by the most underprivileged social strata and that right-wing rebellions are re-actions to the serious relative deprivation experienced by middle strata whose social standing is threatened. The exploitation and oppression of the poor gives rise to radical opposition movements in the form of leftist parties and unions, which are designed to improve the standard of living and social position of the working class. The success of working-class parties and unions in raising the socio-economic status of workers threatens the social status of the stratum immediately above them. The members of the lower middle class experience relative deprivation as the superiority they have traditionally enjoyed over workers is undermined by the economic improvements workers have achieved through their collective efforts. Lower-middle class persons tend to react to this threat to their relative social standing, particularly if economic conditions intensify their insecurity, by re-belling against the existing order in fascist movements that advocate institutional change often aimed at restoring a glorified past. (Blau 1964, 242)

One of the key figures in exchange theory is Richard Emerson (Emerson 1962, 1972a, 1972b, 1976).

I conclude this chapter with John Mearsheimer.

Rational Choice Theory and International Relations

John Mearsheimer helps us see that rational choice theory is an approach to studying social phenomena that can be applied in all fields of knowledge. He attributes the same characteristics of intentionality, rationality, and subjectivity to the state (Orsini 2019, 7–17, 2022, 92–113). In 2001, he published The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, updated in 2014, which applies rational choice theory to international relations.

Mearsheimer ascribes to states a series of typical and predictable behaviors. First, states are endowed with willpower and pursue intentional goals. Second, they are continuously involved in the “security dilemma.” Third, they seek to maximize rewards and reduce costs. Fourth, they are free-riders toward other States when they can. Fifth, they live on the stage of international politics by resorting to the management of impressions, which also includes the strategic use of lies (Mearsheimer 2010).

These are the five fundamental propositions that support the thought of Mearsheimer, who set up his book as Elster and Coleman. First, he explains how the “mind” of the state works and then begins to analyze its behavior. It is typical of rational choice theorists: Whether it is individuals or states, the mind comes first.

Mearsheimer’s first proposition is that the international system is anarchic, which is different from saying that it is chaotic or characterized by disorder. The realist concept of anarchy is an ordering principle, according to which the system is made up of independent states above which there is no central authority.

The second proposition is that states possess, by definition, an offensive capacity with which they can harm or destroy each other. States are a mutual danger and frighten each other just because they exist.

The third proposition is that a state can never be sure of knowing the intentions of other states, which could be hostile and deadly or become so in a short time.

The fourth proposition is that any state’s main purpose is survival, which helps to understand why states fight so fiercely to defend their territorial integrity.

The fifth proposition is that states are rational actors who strategically think about how to survive, adapting means to end in a context characterized by scarcity of resources. They study other states’ preferences and how they can affect their conduct. Furthermore, states think about the long-term consequences of their actions and not just the immediate ones. In Mearsheimer’s theory, we find the typical characteristics of the rational choice theory, summarized at the beginning of this chapter.

Mearsheimer conceives the struggle for power as a zero-sum game and places the utmost importance on the theory of diminishing marginal utility.

Mearsheimer’s Offensive Realism

“Offensive realism” is the structural theory Mearsheimer applies in his books.

This premise is essential.

According to Mearsheimer, a theory is needed to select events and place them in a cause-effect relationship to reduce the world’s complexity. Theories—as he likes to repeat—are simplifications of reality. Any introduction to Mearsheimer’s thought requires clarifying the fundamental assumption underlying offensive realism, namely that the international system is governed by an anarchist-like structure, which condemns states to prepare for war to reduce the risk of being attacked. The military apparatuses of the states are known, but their intentions are not. Even when these are peaceful, they can change. Since no authority sits above states, there is no night watchman that states can call in the night and say: “Come and save me.”

It is all too clear that, for Mearsheimer, fear is the “primum movens” of world politics.

The danger of war cannot be eliminated, not because of human nature, as Hans Morgenthau wrote (Morgenthau 1948), but due to the architecture of the international system. This triggers the security competition, which pushes states to continually struggle to increase their share of power in the international system. The security dilemma—which John Herz exposed in his 1950 article (Hertz 1950)—clarifies the basic logic of realism. States, fearing each other, seek to increase their power. By adopting offensive strategies, they create insecurity among other states, leading them to retaliate similarly. Thus, a state, in an attempt to dissuade governments from possible attacks, materializes the same dangers from which it would like to protect itself. States, to use the example of Thomas C. Schelling, are often in the position of a homeowner who comes face to face with a burglar in the middle of the night. If both are armed, there is a risk of a shooting that no one would want to unleash. It is an unintended effect. In a dangerous situation, the intention attributed to each other is more important than the will of the individual in determining the outcome of the interaction (Schelling 1960, 207).

Mearsheimer compared the structure of international relations to an “iron cage,” of which states are prisoners (Mearsheimer 2001, 12). This is what the tragedy of the great power politics consists of. Even when they strive for peace, states spend most of their time in the maelstrom of self-fulfilling prophecies because they live in fear of being attacked. Minor power politics too are characterized by the constant effort to advance at the expense of others in order to maximize their own safety. According to this interpretative scheme, the feeling of fear, which arises from the anarchy of the international system, plays a much more important role than the economic or political doctrines professed by the states, and the case of Italy confirms this.

After examining Italy’s foreign policy from 1861 until the defeat in World War II, Mearsheimer concludes that liberal Italy and fascist Italy had the same aggressive tendencies and same thirst for domination: “In sum, Mussolini, like Italy’s liberal leaders before him, was a relentless expansionist” (Mearsheimer 2001, 209).

According to this logic, whether China is democratic or authoritarian, self-sufficient or integrated into the global economy, matters little.

Thanks to economic growth, which translates into higher spending in the military sector, China is destined to increase its relative power, creating an inevitable rivalry with the United States. Like all ascendant powers, China is “revisionist.” As it grows richer and more influential, it demands that the international system be reorganized according to its increased power. In this way, it risks triggering the “Thucydides trap,” or the deadly dynamic triggered when an ascending power threatens to displace a dominant power. Graham Allison has identified sixteen cases in the past five hundred years in which a similar scenario has occurred and found that the outcome was war in twelve cases out of sixteen (Allison 2017).

It is called “offensive realism” to distinguish it from “defensive realism.”

From the offensive perspective, the structure of international relations pushes states to live on the attack (Frankel 1996, XVI). Even when they achieve a dominating position over potential rivals, states use every opportunity to advance at the expense of others and increase their share of world power unless a great power becomes the world hegemon—a possibility that Mearsheimer excludes—states are not content with the power they wield, even if it is very large.

From the defensive perspective, however, which finds its main point of reference in the work of Kenneth Waltz, the States are committed to defending their position in the international system (Waltz 1979). According to Barry Posen, attempts to achieve hegemony must always face balancing attempts; aggression always meets resistance; costs of expansion eventually outweigh the gains; and the defense generally has an advantage over the attack. The cumulative effects of these lessons of history—Posen concludes—lead states to recognize that the best course of action is in the search for moderate objectives and in the pursuit of minimum and not maximum security: “Status quo policies are the rule rather than exceptions” (Posen 1984, 69). In short, the defensive realists say, it is not true that the international system offers incentives to be aggressive. If anything, the opposite is true. When states operate recklessly and unreasonably, it is because there is something pathological in their internal politics.

According to Mearsheimer, “states think” rationally (Mearsheimer and Rosato 2023) like egoistic individuals. Survival is their goal and the best way to survive is to behave aggressively. In the updated edition of The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, Mearsheimer reiterates: “Great powers behave aggressively not because they want to or because they possess some inner drive to dominate, but because they have to seek more power if they want to maximize their odds of survival” (Mearsheimer 2014, 21).

After the Berlin Wall fell, several scholars like Charles Krauthammer and Francis Fukuyama, who presented the idea of the end of history, developed optimistic analyses (Krauthammer 1990; Fukuyama 1992). Still, the story is not over because the end of the Cold War did not change the anarchist structure of the international system. The dissolution of the Soviet Union changed the distribution of power. Still, great power politics behaved the same as those of the previous two centuries since they are rational actors who maximize security in the same way an entrepreneur never tires of accumulating money.

Mearsheimer, who is also an excellent speaker, often mocks optimists, to whom he contrasts his cynicism: “I’m John the cynic,” he says in his lectures. Mearsheimer has a playful side, often portraying himself as a Luciferian character with witty self-deprecation. He even features a painting of himself dressed in Machiavelli’s attire on his personal page on the University of Chicago’s website, where he teaches political science. The painting is accompanied by the inscription “Mearchiavelli,” a clever combination of his name and that of the renowned Florentine. After the publication of The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, Mearsheimer has continued to pour a wealth of facts into articles, lectures, and television appearances—which I account for to cover the evolution of his thinking through 2023—to prove that there is no theory of international relations more powerful than offensive realism. It is not a question of superior intelligence but of better theory.

China and Russia as Rational Actors

When asked if China can peacefully rise, Mearsheimer answers that it is unlikely if its economic growth continues to be impetuous. China aspires to become the hegemonic state in its region, and it is rational that it seeks to push the United States back to the West to subjugate American allies in the Pacific, starting with Taiwan. If the Chinese economy continues to grow, the odds of a military conflict with the United States will increase because the economy is the basis of military power.

Some argue that China has no belligerent intentions and that the United States, by militarizing the South China Sea, is creating the typical self-fulfilling prophecy. Faced with such an objection, Mearsheimer replies with a disconsolate tone of voice that the United States is obliged to attribute bad intentions to China because: “This is the tragedy of the great nations” or the iron cage of which they are prisoners.

From the publication of the first edition of The Tragedy of Great Power Politics to today, the world has witnessed numerous conflicts. The attack against the Twin Towers and the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan, the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the war between Russia and Georgia in 2008, the NATO bombing of Libya, the wars in Syria (2011) and Yemen (2015), which later became international conflicts, and the conflict in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and the Russian invasion of that country in 2022. In all cases, the security competition was maximum. To this, we must add the crisis with North Korea of Kim Jong-un, who completed the nuclear program in 2017; the ever-present possibility of a war with Iran, which has become more likely under the Trump administration; and the growing tensions with China in the South China Sea, where many experts, such as Mearsheimer, glimpse war scenarios.

Faced with the multiplication of conflicts in recent decades, Mearsheimer continued to publish his articles to support the superiority of his structural theory of international relations over competing theories. In the article, “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault,” he reconstructs the events based on the paradigm of offensive realism. He concludes that the conflict in Ukraine was generated by the aggressiveness of the West (Mearsheimer 2014).

The United States and its allies, despite having increased their share of world power after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, do not intend to halt the advance at the expense of Russia. On the contrary, they try to take advantage of every opportunity to expand relentlessly. Once under the rule of Moscow, Ukraine had turned into a kind of “buffer state” and enjoyed good relations with Europe and Russia. However, the Western bloc, not content with this de facto neutrality, developed an aggressive policy to favor the fall of Viktor Yanukovych and replace him with a pro-Western president, Petro Poroshenko, an anti-Russian leader and supporter of Ukraine’s entry into NATO. Ukraine shares a border with Russia, which wants to have a friendly or non-hostile state between itself and NATO countries.

Once Janukovic was overthrown, the security competition became maximum, taking the form of a military offensive. The Russian army has invaded Crimea, fearing that the Sevastopol naval base would fall into the hands of the new pro-Western government in Kyiv. The Western bloc has been imposing sanctions against Putin.

According to Mearsheimer’s offensive realism theory, the conflict in eastern Ukraine can be attributed to Putin’s response to NATO’s expansion at Russia’s cost. Confirming the insatiability of the Western bloc, Mearsheimer lists the NATO summits to admit the countries that were once under Russian control.

Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO in 1999; Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia in 2004. Moscow continued to oppose such a large and rapid enlargement. NATO continued to move further east, that is, ever closer to Russia and, in April 2008, the Bucharest summit was held, in which NATO began to consider admitting Georgia and Ukraine. Putin considered the integration of Ukraine and Georgia into NATO unacceptable for Russia’s security, but the George W. Bush administration continued to support the integration process, which France and Germany opposed for fear of unleashing Putin’s wrath. In the end, a compromise was reached: NATO would not have started the formal process but would have limited itself to supporting the aspirations of Georgia and Ukraine with a declaration that did not allay Moscow’s fears. A few months later, in August 2008, Putin went to war with Georgia to clarify that he was ready to start a war to prevent NATO weapons from approaching its borders.

Mearsheimer also provided a realistic explanation of the war in Syria, which was also caused by the West’s attempt to advance at Putin’s expense.

When popular protests erupted in Syria on March 15, 2011, the White House began funding and then arming Syrian rebels to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, in fief of Russia, and replace him with a pro-American president under the “Timber Sycamore,” a secret program run by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) launched in 2012 or 2013 to supply money, weaponry, and training to Syrian opposition militias of the Free Syrian Army fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war (Orsini 2016, 29). Is Timber Sycamore a case of regime change animated by the love for democracy? To this politically correct narration, Mearsheimer contrasts his own. According to Mearsheimer, regime change is nothing more than a label to embellish the harsh reality of politics which is the power struggle. Regime change is the attempt to overthrow governments not aligned with the White House (O’Rourke 2018).

Assad began to lose larger and larger shares of territory. Putin sent his army to defend him in September 2015, and the war took on an increasingly violent character due to the involvement of Iran and the Shiite militias of Hezbollah, who sided with the Russians alongside Assad. Among Putin’s goals was to prevent two Russian military bases on the Syrian coast, the Tartus base and the Latakia base, from falling into the hands of a pro-Western government. The White House continued to arm the Syrian rebels, leading to an escalation of the conflict—aggravated by the rise of the Islamic State—which would have found one of its most dramatic moments in the battle of Aleppo. The case of the war in Syria confirms another assumption of offensive realism: Regardless of domestic politics, states seek to take advantage of all opportunities to increase their share of world power at the expense of others. Despite receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama did not hesitate to fuel the war in Syria so as not to miss the opportunity to increase the White House’s share of power in the Middle East.

At least three aspects of Mearsheimer’s thought must be mentioned.

The Rationality of Nuclear Proliferation

The first concerns the problem of nuclear proliferation.

While American administrations are busy hindering the emergence of new nuclear powers, Mearsheimer thinks atomic bombs are “weapons of peace.” They are weapons or deterrence.

During a broadcast on PBS, Mearsheimer pitted against Dov Zakheim, a former Pentagon official. Adhering to the thesis developed by Kenneth Waltz (Waltz 2012), Mearsheimer argued that the Middle East would become more stable if Iran acquired the atomic bomb, since neither Israel nor the United States could no longer threaten to overthrow the regime of Teheran. Likewise, Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi would not have been attacked in 2003 and 2011 if they had had the atomic bomb. Mearsheimer acknowledges that the potential for nuclear war caused by inadvertent escalation would remain, but the probability of such an event would be slim. Dov Zakheim rejected the validity of such reasoning. During the process of building the atomic bomb—he said—Iran would almost certainly suffer a bombing by Israel and, if it manages to complete the nuclear program, it would blackmail rival states, generating new instability. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Egypt would react with the nuclear race. Mearsheimer rejoined that there is no evidence that governments use atomic bombs to blackmail other states and added that the White House would extend its “nuclear umbrella” to Saudi Arabia in case of danger, as it did with Germany and Japan during the Cold War.

It is important to focus on the second aspect of Mearsheimer’s thinking, which pertains to the ideal “grand strategy” for safeguarding American interests globally.

Mearsheimer identifies four “great strategies,” unlike Robert J. Art, who has indicated even seven (Art 1998).

The first great strategy is called “isolationism.” This approach argues that no foreign army can successfully invade the United States because it is situated between two oceans and possesses many nuclear weapons. As a result, the United States should avoid engaging in any conflicts outside of the Western Hemisphere.

The second ground strategy, “offshore balancing,” is the one Mearsheimer prefers. According to the offshore balancers, the areas of the world that are most important for American interests are three: East Asia, Europe, and the Persian Gulf because this is where the great powers are located: China, Japan, France, Russia, and Germany. The Persian Gulf is important for oil. The United States should send its soldiers to fight in these regions only when one great power risks taking over the others, as it did in World War I and World War II. After the Cold War ended, Mearsheimer proposed calling back all American troops abroad to save billions of dollars and investing them at home for the benefit of the Americans. Mearsheimer reiterated his preferences for offshore balancing (Mearsheimer and Walt 2016).

The third ground strategy is “selective engagement.” Selective engagers, too, regard Asia, Europe, and the Persian Gulf as the most important regions. Still, they believe that American soldiers should be stationed permanently in these areas to prevent conflicts and curb the expansionist aims of the most powerful states.

The fourth ground strategy is “global dominance,” according to which the United States should strive to exert control over the entire world. Those who adhere to this ground strategy fall into two categories.

The first category includes neo-conservative imperialists like Paul Wolfowitz, who seek to attain global dominance through unilateralism. Neo-conservatives exalt the role of military force. They love neither international institutions nor American allies, especially European ones, whom they consider opportunistic and unreliable.

The second category includes the liberal imperialists, such as Madeleine Albright or Hillary Clinton, who, although sharing the goal of the neo-conservatives, world hegemony, are cautious in using force and inclined to multilateralism.

Bill Clinton, president from 1993 to 2001, represented a turning point as he embraced liberal imperialism, setting a goal that was too ambitious for the United States, which has seen public debt grow due to military spending. The situation was aggravated by George W. Bush, who started out as a “selective engager” but became a neo-conservative imperialist after the attack on the Twin Towers.

Mearsheimer’s judgment on American foreign policy is drastic. The United States has suffered setbacks and failures in all the countries where it has invested the most. The White House experienced “total failure” in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, and the peace process in Palestine, Syria, North Korea, Ukraine, and Iran.

Finally, I want to discuss Mearsheimer’s belief that bipolar systems provide more stability than multipolar systems for three primary reasons.

First, a bipolar world has only one fault line, whereas a multipolar world has several. Second, alliances tend to be more rigid in bipolar systems, while multipolar systems are more unstable. Third, in a bipolar world, the great powers can more accurately calculate the resources of the enemy bloc, reducing the likelihood of miscalculations and unintentional conflicts (Kupchan 2002, 47).

Mearsheimer’s work is based on the rational choice theory and the belief that objective forces influence human behavior. Unlike Coleman, Mearsheimer’s approach is holistic and not individualistic. Comte’s individual is driven to act in a certain way by the law of the three stages; Mearsheimer’s individual is because of the structure of international relations.

For Mearsheimer, the rise of power politics depends on three material factors: Population size, economic wealth, and the military. In sum, a large population allows for constructing a large market with which a state can build a formidable army.

In summary, the ingredients for the success of a state in the international arena are demography, economy, and army. Israel, explains Mearsheimer, can never be a great power because it has too small a population and, therefore, will never be able to build a large army to invade and permanently occupy an enemy country. China and India, on the other hand, have huge populations. They can build a huge market and use the national wealth to recruit soldiers and build armaments.

These three material factors of success are necessary, albeit insufficient, conditions to determine the rise of a state, which also needs two immaterial factors: Strategies, which Mearsheimer considers the most important of the non-material factors, and alliances. A rich and powerful state with bad strategy and bad alliances cannot become a hegemonic power. At the same time, a minor power can prevail against a great power if it has superior strategies and alliances. Non-material factors for success also include espionage, determination, climate, and the spread of disease among soldiers on the battlefield.

Conclusion

This chapter has examined the ideas of seven authors: Coleman, Homans, Blau, della Porta, Mearsheimer, Kruglanski, and Petersen. However, Kruglanski and Petersen are not rational choice theorists. They are useful in showing the limitations of rational choice theory. Kruglanski and Petersen do not adhere to rational choice theory but instead provide insight into its limitations.

This chapter includes many concepts to be remembered.

Coleman’s boat shows that the simple aggregation of individual actions cannot explain many social phenomena. Coleman tried to improve methodological individualism by clarifying the micro-macro link.

Homans explained that individuals act in a rather predictable manner through a system of rewards and punishments, not unlike guinea pigs in laboratories.

Blau made exchange theory more complex and interesting with his social exchange theory of power.

There are eleven concepts by della Porta that should be remembered. According to della Porta, three mechanisms guarantee the emergence of clandestine political violence: Escalating policing or state repression, competitive escalation, and activation of militant networks. Four mechanisms guarantee the persistence of clandestine political violence: Organizational compartmentalization, action militarization, ideological encapsulation, and militant enclosure. Four mechanisms generate the decline of clandestine political violence: Arrest or killing of militants, de-escalating policing by the state, internal crisis provoking organizational disbandment, and individual de-encapsulation.

Petersen’s sociology of emotions makes us aware of the limits of rational choice theory. Petersen’s social actors are guided more by social norms and moral obligations to family and community rather than rational economic behavior. They are involved in emotions. Petersen’s insight is compelling: Emotions are a powerful force that can transform a simple issue into an all-consuming obsession. We should be aware of the power of our emotions to drive action.

Kruglanski’s research requires readers to know the motivational imbalance and significance-quest theories. Kruglanski, Belanger, and Gunaratna have shown that radicalization toward terrorism is driven above all by passions, feelings, and existential needs that terrorist organizations exploit to pursue their goals. In summary, individuals who become radicalized are passionate, while the leaders of terrorist organizations are rational and strategic.

According to Mearsheimer, states are rational actors. Three of Mearsheimer’s concepts must be remembered. The first is the “anarchy of the international system.” The second is the “security dilemma” around which offensive realism gravitates. The third is the “structure of the international system” that pushes states to act in particular ways.

In addition, Mearsheimer identifies four grand strategies: “isolationism,” “offshore balancing,” “selective engagement,” and “global dominance.” Global dominance is divided into two subcategories: “Neoconservative imperialism” and “liberal imperialism.”

For Mearsheimer, bipolar systems provide more stability than multipolar systems for three primary reasons. First, a multipolar world has several fault lines, whereas a bipolar world has only one. Second, alliances in bipolar systems are more rigid, while those in multipolar systems tend to be less stable. Third, in a bipolar world, the great powers can more accurately calculate the resources of the enemy bloc, reducing the likelihood of miscalculations and unintentional conflicts. The material factors for the success of a state in the international arena are demography, economy, and army. The immaterial factors are strategies and alliances. When wars break out, important factors for success on the battlefield include espionage, determination, climate, and the spread of disease among soldiers.

Self-Test Path

• (1) What are the basic assumptions of rational choice theory?

• (2) Can you please discuss the prisoner’s dilemma?

• (3) Can you please discuss Coleman’s theory of revolutions?

• (4) Can you please draw the “Coleman Boat”?

• (5) What are the main assumptions behind Homans’s social exchange theory?

• (6) Can you please discuss della Porta’s mechanism-based explanation of terrorism?

• (7) Can you please discuss Kruglanski’s significance-quest theory?

• (8) What is the power of emotions according to Petersen?

• (9) Talk about Homans’s social exchange theory

• (10) Can you please discuss Blau’s social exchange theory of power?

• (11) Can you please explain what Mearsheimer’s offensive realism consists of?

• (12) What is the “security dilemma”?