This book is the “story of the ideological war against communist and totalitarian forms of economic and political order” (pp. 1–2). It argues that not only did the west win a military and economic triumph over socialism; it also won an ideological triumph, and that this ideological war was consciously fought by a group of scholar warriors who, as part of the United States' cold war strategic plan, sought to “rescue capitalist democracy from the threat of authoritarian socialism” (p. 2). According to Amadae, these scholars “fought with tenacity” and because of their work, the ideological war ended with almost total victory for the side of capitalist democracy. The weapon of choice of these scholar warriors was “rational choice theory” and this book is a “narrative account of the ascendancy of rational choice theory in a variety of fields” (p. 9). The success of the war means that rational choice theory serves “as a philosophic underpinning for American economic and political liberalism” (p. 9).

The book is divided into an introduction, which summarizes the argument; a prologue, which relates rational choice theory to J. Schumpeter, F. Hayek, and K. Popper; a four-part core book, which makes the central arguments; and an epilogue.

In the core book, Part 1, “Rational Policy Analysis and the National Security State,” Amadae describes the beginnings of formal rational choice theory with RAND Corporation at its center. (According to Amadae, “virtually all roads to rational choice lead from RAND” (p. 75).) Part 2, “Rational Choice Theory in American Social Science,” is a story of the various battalions of scholar warriors in the battle; it has separate chapters on K. Arrow's social choice theory, J. Buchanan and G. Tullock's public choice theory, and W. Riker's positive political theory, all of whom Amadae sees as having “rebuilt the theoretical foundations of American capitalist democracy and defeated idealist, collectivist, and authoritarian social theories” (p. 13). Part 3, “Antecedents to Rational Choice Theory,” provides a broader context for the larger battle, and discusses how this ideological war fits with the tradition of liberalism. Part 4, “Rational Choice Liberalism Today,” places the discussion in the present context; it discusses J. Rawls, A. Sen, and younger scholars such as K. Binmore, who is expanding rational choice theory into a broader social, rather than just economic, theory.

As is obvious from the brief summary, this book covers an enormous amount of material and shows impressive erudition. But to me, the book is fundamentally unsatisfying for two reasons. The first is its description of the rational choice research program as a war. Amadae seems to be arguing that rational choice theory was a rationally chosen battle tool, whereas I see it as a research program that scholars followed for the same reasons they follow any research program—because it was interesting and potentially insightful, and because working on it offered them possibilities for articles and books that they needed to advance their careers. Although some of the researchers he discusses may have favored democratic capitalism as an ideology, the ones I know were not especially ideologically committed, but instead were willing to follow the analysis wherever it might lead. Scholars gravitated to RAND because that was where the money and interesting people were, not because organizers of RAND or the scholars had some grand design to construct a research program to protect democratic capitalism.

The second problem I have with the book is its assumed premise that rational choice theory is a central pillar in the support of democratic capitalism. In my view rational choice theory offers little support for democratic capitalism. But that does not matter because an ideology needs no formal theoretical support. Had social choice theory, public choice theory, and positive political theory never developed, our economic and our political system would still be there, and would have as much, or as little, support as it now has.

Today, in the academic discussions in which I take part, formal rational choice theory of the type described by Amadae is waning, but public support of markets is waxing. Although the new work is based on the premise that rationality in some sense is a reasonable assumption, the type of super rationality that formed the basis of social choice theory is not seen as the most useful version. At best, one may still get some gain from the assumption by considering issues in an evolutionary game theory perspective.

This broader, less restrictive, perspective of rationality has been around for a long time, but Amadae specifically rules it out of his consideration. Thus, Amadae omits any discussion of Milton Friedman, who, among economists, was probably the person most concerned with saving democratic capitalism.

In short, for me, this book provides an unsatisfying narrative that attributes too much global logic both to researchers and to the system in driving the formal rational choice research program. Although it is true that a system will provide greater support for those research programs that support rather than challenge the system, the story of how that takes place is far subtler than the story told in this book.