Macro-sociology, rational choice theory, and time - A theoretical perspective on the empirical analysis of social processes

During the last two decades, there has been an explosion of rational choice scholarship in the social sciences. The purpose of the first part of this paper. is to discuss some of the reasons why this development has had surprisingly little influence on large-scale data analysis. In the second part, the paper shows that any theoretically powerful sociological analysis of a macro-sociological problem must pay attention to both structural and micro-level issues. However, not in the usual static way. Any macro-micro framework must recognize that time matters in this relationship. It must identify the particular historical structures and processes which dominate the changes occurring in a given population and it has to specify the causal mechanisms that allow us to trace the encounters of intentionally acting individuals with the flow of history as a series of choice processes.