Book Description
This book is an expanded and revised edition of the author's critically acclaimed volume Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. In twenty-six succinct chapters, Jon Elster provides an account of the nature of explanation in the social sciences.He offers an overview of key explanatory mechanisms in the social sciences, relying on hundreds of examples and drawing on a large variety of sources-psychology, behavioral economics, biology, political science, historical writings, philosophy and fiction.Written in accessible and jargon-free language, Elster aims at accuracy and clarity while eschewing formal models. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Strange, varied, and magisterial
This is an incredibly odd book, which makes it all the more unfortunate that it has received hardly any reviews. (A search of the relevant journals finds only http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=11663 and the other reviews here on Amazon are of the vastly different _Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences_.)

Each page is highly readable, interesting, and thoughtful. But none give any clue about what this 500-page book is about. Elster discusses everything from drug addiction to sixteenth-century Calvinism converts but the book has no real motivating principle, giving such discussions the feel of "one damn thing after another".

Elster begins the book by recanting his previous strong support for rational choice explanations, noting there is no evidence of a mechanism that causes people to make rational choices nor can the predictions of the theory be tested with much success. This is correct in my view, but Elster has no replacement motivating theory for social behavior and the result is a book without much theoretical coherency.

The book is certainly intriguing, and well worth reading for the examples and anecdotes alone, but the book gives off the sense of a sad ending note for Elster's incredible career. One cannot help but hope that Elster has at least one more analytical trick up his sleeve.

Simply the best: read it at least twice
I read this book twice. The first time, I thought that it was excellent, the best compendium of ideas of social science by arguably the best thinker in the field. I took copious notes, etc. I agreed with its patchwork-style approach to rational decision making. I knew that it had huge insights applicable to my refusal of general theories [they don't work], rather limit ourselves to nuts and bolts [they work].
Then I started reading it again, as the book tends to locate itself by my bedside and sneaks itselfin my suitcase when I go on a trip. It is as if the book wanted me to read it.It is what literature does to you when it is at its best. So I realized why: it had another layer of depth --and the author distilled ideas from the works of Proust, La Rochefoucault, Tocqueville, Montaigne, people with the kind of insights that extend beyond the ideas, and that makes you feel that a reductionist academic treatment of the subject will necessary distort it [& somehow Elster managed to combine Montaigne and Kahneman-Tversky].So as an anti-Platonist I finally found a rigorous treatment of human nature that is not Platonistic --not academic (in the bad sense of the word).
Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Intelligent introduction to the social sciences
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Nuts and Bolts is its accessibility. The language is clear and not overly technical, and despite the excessive use of footnotes the text flows and facilitates understanding.
Elster gives us mechanisms, or nuts and bolts, to help us explain and understand complex social behavior and organization. This work is invaluable as an introduction to the social sciences, but it is not limited to the student or the specialist (of which I am neither). Elster does not make the mistake that countless other social scientists have made in falling for fixed rules and materialistic thinking; instead, he displays great wisdom in knowing the limits of the social sciences while at the same time being an eloquent advocate for rational choice and the development of a greater scientific understanding of human society.

A must read...
If you are absolutely anyone; an undergraduate student, a postgraduate student, a researcher, a Social Science scientist, or anyone from any field of life; who is just interested in knowing a few intricacies of the studies in rationality and subversions of rationality, collective behaviour of people, human rational and irrational behaviour and so on, but in a *SIMPLE* manner, read this one... One of the absolute best books on rationality/irrationality, available in the world of Social Sciences. Other than this, "Sour Grapes" by Elster and a couple of other books by Sen, Arrow, Coleman and others, are a MUST read for a comprehensive understanding of the subject of rational choice, individual interests, collective action and public-choice theory...

A must read... go for it.

Subhasish Ghosh
University of Oxford
9th Feb 2006

Corner stone of social science
This book is an indispensible introduction to the social sciences. It should be used alongside with Deirdre McCloskey's Economical Writing and Wayne Booth's et al The Craft of Research. This trio of books provide the corner stones for any social science student: what it is, how to write it and how to do it. ... Read more

Book Description
This provocative book argues that, very often, people may benefit from being constrained in their options or from being ignorant. The three long essays that constitute this book revise and expand the ideas developed in Jon Elster's classic study Ulysses and the Sirens. It is not simply a new edition of the earlier book though; many of the issues merely touched on before are explored here in much more detail. Elster shows how seemingly disparate examples that limit freedom of action reveal similar patterns, so much so that he proposes a new field of study: constraint theory. The book is written in Elster's characteristically vivid style and will interest professionals and students in philosophy, political science, psychology, and economics. ... Read more

Book Description
Jon Elster has written a comprehensive, wide-ranging book on the emotions in which he considers the full range of theoretical approaches. Drawing on history, literature, philosophy and psychology Elster presents a complete account of the role of the emotions in human behavior. Combining methodological and theoretical arguments with empirical case studies and written with Elster's customary verve and economy, this book will have a broad appeal to those in philosophy, psychology, economics, political science, as well as literary studies, history, and sociology. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Superlative work about emotions
This superlative work belongs on the shelf of any serious student of art, literature, philosophy and psychology - not to mention those readers who seek self-knowledge. Author Jon Elster explores the complex cognitive antecedents and consequences of emotional experience. Noting that much of what society needs to know about emotions is inaccessible in the psychology laboratory, he makes original, insightful use of literary and philosophical sources. He uses the work of such authors as Francois de La Rochefoucauld, Michel de Montaigne, Jean de La Bruyère and Alexis de Tocqueville to examine how emotional mechanisms function. This approach sheds light on the emotions and on the way you might read literature or listen to music. We highly recommend this book and find it valuable not only for what it says, but for what it inspires. It is capable of changing how you think and feel in ways that are (just as emotions themselves) far from predictable.

Endlessly helpful- making psychology for the social sciences
I cannot praise this book enough. The writing is clear, the thinking is meticulous and infinitely clever, and the usefullness of understanding thedifferent theories of the emotive being in the social scinces cannot beover-emphasized.

This book is Elster's best since "PoliticalPsychology".

If you are not an Elster partisan, what is wrong withyou? ... Read more

Book Description
Sour Grapes aims to subvert orthodox theories of rational choice through the study of forms of irrationality. Dr Elster begins with an analysis of the notation of rationality, to provide the background and terms for the subsequent discussions, which cover irrational behaviour, irrational desires and irrational belief. These essays continue and complement the arguments of Jon Elster's earlier book, Ulysses and the Sirens. That was published to wide acclaim, and Dr Elster shows the same versatility here in drawing on philosophy, political and social theory, decision-theory, economics and psychology, as well as history and literature. ... Read more

Book Description
It is sometimes assumed that voting is the central mechanism for political decision making.The contributors to this volume focus on an alternative mechanism, which is decision by discussion or deliberation.This volume is characterized by a realistic approach to the issue of deliberative democracy.Rather than assuming that deliberative democracy is always ideal, the authors critically probe its limits and weaknesses as well as its strengths. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Pericles Redux
If you were designing a political system from scratch, what decision-making procedures would you enshrine to guarantee fair and efficient outcomes? According to Jon Elster, all possible procedures are permutations of three ideal types: arguing, bargaining and voting.

Voting involves the aggregation of individual preferences. The typical example is the referendum by secret ballot. To be democratic, the principle of majority rule must apply. A fine procedure, we might say. But surely it is misplaced optimism to believe that some sort of invisible hand will guide the mass of probably uninformed voters towards mastery of a complex issue.

Bargaining, on the other hand, involves interaction between participants. The isolation and anonymity of the participants is removed, and decisions are arrived at after those that command the weightiest resources ( eg. money, control of the army, authority over demonstrators ) make an agreement in exchange for various concessions.

Arguing similarly involves participant interaction, but appeals are made to impartial reason rather than partisan interest. The deliberations of the jury room are the model for this procedure. If 'voting' has its roots in Rousseau's theory of democracy and 'bargaining' belongs with the liberal democratic tradition of Dahl and Schumpeter, 'arguing' is firmly rooted in the republican tradition. Elster cites Pericles' eulogy of Athens: instead of a stumbling block, discussion is "an indispensable preliminary to any wise action". The idea turns up throughout history: Burke's speech to the electors of Bristol implies a deliberative model of sorts.

Its most recent incarnation was partly a result of Habermas' influential theory of communicative action. Habermas' claim that speech 'does' things ( from Austin's speech-act theory ), and is primarily oriented towards understanding and consensus, was ideally suited to revamping the theory of deliberative democracy. Despite being an heir of Kant and Marx, Habermas does not really get away from the republican mindset inherent in the model. In this sense, the elitist implications of deliberative democracy worry me . . .

Elster's volume fleshes out some of these worries in a reasonably comprehensive way. Susan Stokes' essay 'Pathologies of Deliberation' is well worth reading, as is James Johnson's 'Arguing for Deliberation: Some Skeptical Considerations'. Elster makes the important distinction between deliberation in the making of a constitution and the level of deliberation in the final constitutional document.

Of the remaining essays, Cass Sunstein's 'Health-Health Trade-Offs' is the stand-out, managing to locate the debate in solid empirical examples. Sunstein's conclusion that must find a balance between 'voting' and 'arguing' struck a chord and reminded me of its applicability to the current hot political topic of GM food: how can we balance voter's 'gut feelings' against GM food with a vigorous scientific and public policy debate which is increasingly pointing to its advantages?

Deliberative democracy is not simply abstract theorising. It is very much located in the politics of modern societies. I strongly recommend this book. ... Read more

Book Description
Emotion and addiction lie on a continuum between simple visceral drives such as hunger, thirst, and sexual desire at one end and calm, rational decision making at the other. Although emotion and addiction involve visceral motivation, they are also closely linked to cognition and culture. They thus provide the ideal vehicle for Jon Elster's study of the interrelation between three explanatory approaches to behavior: neurobiology, culture, and choice.

The book is organized around parallel analyses of emotion and addiction in order to bring out similarities as well as differences. Elster's study sheds fresh light on the generation of human behavior, ultimately revealing how cognition, choice, and rationality are undermined by the physical processes that underlie strong emotions and cravings. This book will be of particular interest to those studying the variety of human motivations who are dissatisfied with the prevailing reductionisms. ... Read more

Book Description
This volume of essays is very much a sequel to the two earlier collections by Jon Elster, Ulysses and the Sirens and Sour Grapes.His topic is rationality--its scope, its limitations, and its failures.Elster considers rational responses to the insufficiency of reason itself and to the "indeterminacies" in deploying rational choice theory, and discusses the irrationality of not seeing when, where, and what these are.A key essay that gives the collection its title examines disputes in cases of child custody that are paradigmatically indeterminate. Leaving aside cases where one parent is patently unfit and assuming that protracted dispute is against the immediate interests of the child, Elster argues that three options present themselves: a strong presumption in favor of the mother, a strong presumption in favor of the primary caretaker, and tossing a coin.Though the first two options may be preferable in the short term, Elster argues that there is a case for randomization in the long term. ... Read more

Book Description
The question addressed in this challenging new book is: What binds societies together and prevents them from disintegrating into chaos and war?Elster analyzes two concepts of social order: stable, predictable patterns of behavior, and cooperative behavior.The book examines various aspects of collective action and bargaining from the perspective of rational choice theory and the theory of social norms.It is a fundamental assumption of the book that social norms provide an important kind of motivation for action that is irreducible to rationality. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Another Junk work for this professor to put on his resume
This is a sociology book thats written in dense, deliberately wordy, intended to used on this professors resume to impress employers who probably wouldn't read the book rather flip through it and read a paragraph or two and come to the conclusion that "oh this is technical, he must be very smart", no doubt. Having read this book I can say its junk. Its hard to read and the points the author makes are trivial. Its one of those books you'll only find stashed away in a college library, never to be used or referenced by anyone. 287 pages of paper wasted. Don't waste you're money. It's an expense waste of money. ... Read more

Book Description
The essays in this volume consider the question of whether the self is a unity or whether it should be conceived without metaphor as divided - as a 'multiple self'. The issue is a central one for several disciplines. It bears directly on the account of rationality and the explanation of individual decision-making and behavior. ... Read more

Book Description
In this volume a diverse group of economists, philosophers, political scientists, and psychologists address the problems, principles, and practices involved in comparing the well-being of different individuals.A series of questions lie at the heart of this investigation:What is the relevant concept of well-being for the purposes of comparison?How could the comparisons be carried out for policy purposes?How are such comparisons made now?How do the difficulties involved in these comparisons affect the status of utilitarian theories?This collection constitutes the most advanced and comprehensive treatment of one of the cardinal issues in social theory. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Technical but with interdisciplinary perspectives
The first part of the book has contributions mainly from philophers or with a methological emphasis. The second part is more oriented towards econometrics and formal expositions. Elster's own contribution standsapart, carrying a more empirical content about the way real peopleimplement justice (see his book on "local justice" for more).Make sure you already understand the basics of moral philosophy and welfareeconomics before reading this. ... Read more

Book Description
This provocative book takes up and develops the themes of rationality and irrationality in Jon Elster's earlier work.Its purposes are threefold.First, Elster shows how belief and preference formation in the realm of politics are shaped by social and political institutions.Second, he argues for an important distinction in the social sciences between mechanisms and theories.Third, he illustrates those general principles of political psychology through readings of three outstanding political psychologists:the French classical historian, Paul Veyne; the Soviet dissident writer, Alexander Zinoviev; the great French political theorist, Alexis de Tocqueville. ... Read more

Book Description

This series brings together a carefully edited selection of the most influential and enduring articles on central topics in social and political theory.Each volume contains ten to twelve articles and an introductory essay by the editor.

Book Description
After a change of political system, notably a transition from an autocratic to a democratic, or at least constitutional, regime, a process of transitional justice emerges in which wrongdoers from the previous regime are judged responsible and victims are compensated. John Elster looks at examples and proposes a framework for explaining variations. In addition to the numerous transitions after 1945 in Western Europe and after 1989 in Eastern Europe, transitional justice has taken place in classical Greece, the English and French restorations, and, more recently, in Latin America and South Africa. John Elster looks at these examples in this history of transitional justice. ... Read more

Book Description
This book examines the problems and issues facing formerly communist states as they seek to develop a new democratic political order and a market economy. Studies of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia provide detailed empirical data concerning constitution making, the shaping of democratic institutions, marketization of the economy, and social policy. This new research is then linked to innovative theoretical material to offer a unique assessment of the difficulties of creating a new political order in the region. ... Read more

Book Description
A concise and comprehensive introduction to Marx's social, political and economic thought for the beginning student. Jon Elster surveys in turn each of the main themes of marxist thought: methodology, alienation, economics, exploitation, historical materialism, classes, politics, and ideology; in a final chapter he assesses 'what is living and what is dead in the philosophy of Marx'. The emphasis throughout is on the analytical structure of Marx's arguments and the approach is at once sympathetic, undogmatic, and rigorous. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Truth in Packaging
An introduction should be just that, an introduction. At the very least, this means that exposition should predominate over commentary. When a work reverses those roles, the result is commentary, not introduction, regardless of title or pretensions to the contrary.This is basic to the genre, and has nothing to do with allegiance on part of writer, reader, or reviewer. The axiom that areader cannot judge intelligently without first understanding what is being judged (in this case Marx) underlies the significance of exposition to an introduction, and speaks to an elementary point that apparently eludes the overzealous reviewer below. Properly understood, Elster's work is commentary, with its own agenda, and scant if any attention to theneeds ofintroduction, let alone a good one. (Notice how Elster's preferredmethodology is given priority of placeand then used to critique what little is presented of Marx's.) I would have no quarrel were the book titled *Elster on Marx* or *Making Sense of Marx*. Nor do I necessarily have a quarrel with those who criticize or revise Marx. But to title a work Introduction and then bury a smattering ofexposition inside a running critique - no matter how worthy or not the commentary - is to do reader and purchaser a disservice. Unfortunately, the book is about Elster, not Marx, and while there are many other introductions that do the job properly, this is not one of them. And, no, Mr. Ver Sluys, this is not about that tiresome chestnut of subservience to Marx - for that, I suggest you check your own effusions on Elster. What it is about is truth in packaging for readers who wish to make up their own minds.

Excellent and worth the dive
Apparently the gentleman below and I have read different books with the same title, because the book I read, "An Introduction to Karl Marx" by Jon Elster, was absolutely nothing like the bookmr. Doepke reviewed.

The book, as far as I can tell with my level of marxian scholarship, is a complete introductoin, and it suffered from none of the failings attributed by it below. Descriptions flowed easily and succintly and I had no trouble understanding them at all. Perhaps this is because I am more of an advanced marx scholar than our other reviewer friend.

But I suspect that the reason mr. Doepke is not happy with this book is because it is a disspasionate consideration of Marxian ideas from a supremely educated man who holds no special religious-kind of attraction to Marx, as so many Marx scholars do.

Let there be no doubt- the disspasionate nature of mr. Elster's analysis of Marx and his contributions is what makes him a rare find. Most all Marx scholars have some kind of agenda in approaching marx, and are colored accordingly (Tom Sowell and Edward Herman, for example).

To his undying credit, Mr. Elster is a leftist who seems to have no agenda in speaking about Marx. Stunningly, he without exception atomizes Marx's main theses and considers them both seperately and as a whole. The result is incisive and dead-on commentary that no other scholar alive has ever even approached, to my knowledge.

What George Orwell did for concretly existing communist governments Jon Elster has done for Marxian theory- a deadly accurate eye methodically slashing through to the real core. I have never found a single scholar that I was not hard pressed to disagree violently with, but Elster manages to leave me without complaint and wondering how I am able to critique the bad points of his books. I am simply unequal to the task of disagreeing with any of Elster's main notions. This is an amazing fact considering we have no ideological common ground. That's how good this man is.

And a last point- unlike most Marx scholars, Elster has a wide range in a vast array of subjects, which makes him interesting to philosophers and economists such as myself in addition to nearly the entire sweep of the social sciences from psychology and sociology on outward.

Buy this book. Elster has no equal.

An introduction to Elster more than Marx
Elster's book serves as a poor introduction to Marx's thought for severalreasons. First, Elster doesn't lay out Marx's specific doctrines in muchdetail, leaving the reader with a mere impression instead of anunderstanding of the theories involved.Much lack of clarity and detailresults from Elster's eagerness to refute specific theories at the sametime he presents them. Moreover his interpretations are consistentlyuncharitable. Combined with little effort at elaborating Marx's theories tomeet the objections, we're left with a pretty partisan result, and one madeparadoxical by Elster's own self-described Marxism.

The impressionthroughout is of superficiality. I suspect much of this superficialityresults from Elster's "methodological individualism" andfashionable reliance on game theory, the current paradigm of rationablebehavior. Small wonder that Elster finds sympathy only in certain Marxianthemes rather than specific results, given Marx's general allegiance toholistic forms of explanation.The book's unsatisfactory nature is almostredeemed by an outstanding chapter on self-realization as Marx's chiefsocial value.The rest of the chapters pale in comparison to this littlegem among the castoffs. ... Read more

Book Description
The eleven essays in this volume, supplemented by an editorial introduction, center around three overlapping problems. First, why would a society want to limit its own sovereign power by imposing constitutional constraints on democratic decision-making? Second, what are the contributions of democracy and constitutions to efficient government? Third, what are the relations among democracy, constitutionalism, and private property?This comprehensive discussion of the problems inherent in constitutional democracy will be of interest to students in a variety of social sciences. It illuminates particularly the current efforts of many countries, especially in Latin America, to establish stable democratic regimes. ... Read more

Book Description
The contributions in this study present a comprehensive analysis of transitional justice from 1945 to the present. They feature a general theoretical analysis of the processes of retribution and reparation as well as case studies by historians and political scientists who discuss the West European transitions after 1945 and more recent Latin American, East European, and South African transitions to democracy in the 1980s and 1990s. The volume's focus is on retribution against the leaders and agents of the autocratic regime preceding the democratic transition, and on reparation to its victims. ... Read more

Book Description
This volume contains a selection of Karl Marx's most important writings, organized thematically under eight headings: methodology, alienation, economics, exploitation, historical materialism, classes, politics, and ideology. Jon Elster provides a brief introduction to each selection to explain its context and its place in Marx's argument. The volume is designed as a companion to Elster's An Introduction to Karl Marx and the thematic structure of each book is the same. But the Reader can also stand on its own and offers the student a substantial and revealingly organized selection of the crucial texts needed to understand and assess Marx's views. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

They complement each other...
In reference to Charles' review, I've read both this book and Ritzer's words on Marx.Charles is definitely correct that Ritzer is easier to understand than the Elster edit, but I think the two complement each other.

19th century German academic translations aren't going to be an easy read, however, what Marx said is essentially here.I wouldn't do as I did and try to read the whole text straight though, but it's an excellent text for linking Marx's words to the specific topics he addresses.

The four stars is based on what the text is supposed to be, which is certainly not a contemporary synopsis of Marx's work.

Classic, hard to understand Marx
While it is true that Marx may be one of the harder theorists to understand, this book didn't really give me a better understanding of anything. If you want a good amount of straight Marx text, this is the bookfor you. If you want to understand Marx and learn about his work, I suggestlooking into the introductory texts of George Ritzer. He does a MUCH betterjob a getting Marx across to the reader than anything in this book. ... Read more