In recent years rational choice approaches have come to be a major paradigm, perhaps the central emerging theoretical framework, within the political science profession.¹ Its proponents and practitioners can be found within virtually every subfield of research, including in the most unlikely of places, e.g. among those who think of themselves as Marxists and even in one recent book which purports to explain the development of the 1950s and 1960s civil rights movement in the United States. Many of its adherents claim that rational choice theory is the basis for a new science of politics (although a few of the leading practitioners are remarkably modest in their claims; note in this regard Fiorina and Shepsle 1982; Hardin 1982; although in contrast, see Ordeshook 1986). Most proponents, however, make a strong claim that rational choice models are the only valid basis for doing rigorous work in the social sciences. Rational choice theory is, thus, not merely posed as an alternative to other theories or as an attractive, emerging research program, but as a universally applicable, superior orientation — the only one a reasonable, serious social science researcher ought to choose.² This chapter examines these claims, making some preliminary remarks.