Video

Dr. Paul Clements—Professor,  Political Science and Director, MIDA Program, WMU

My forthcoming book, Rawlsian Political Analysis: Rethinking the Microfoundations of Social Science, offers a new approach to social analysis as an improvement on neoclassical economics and rational choice theory. While these approaches are based on the assumption of rational utility maximization, I follow Rawls and Kant and assume that choice is based on independent reasonable and rational capacities. I will begin this presentation by laying out the book’s principal arguments. Then I will discuss two of the book’s applications of the proposed approach that directly involve evaluation: analyses of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh and of the ethics and politics of climate change.