Rational or public choice theory, I will use the terms interchangeably
here, was developed by a number of American economists in the 1960s. At
first mainstream political scientists simply ignored this new approach to the
study of politics. By the early 1980s it had however acquired a growing
influence in American political science departments and some British and
European outposts. In 1967 around 5 per cent of the articles published in
America’s most prestigious political science journal, the American Political
Science Review, used public choice theory (Green and Shapiro 1994: 3). By
1982 this figure had risen to around 20 per cent. By 1992 it stood at nearly
40 per cent.