In near exhaustion after reading McKean and Krauss, let me ask a naive question.
Maybe in principle ratch models allow individuals all sorts of (exogenous)
preferences, but as a practical matter, at least for these fairly primitive
models we Japanologists are worried about, don't they generally assume a single
preference across a class of individuals? E.g. politicians want to get reelected
and bureaucrats (in Silberman's useful formulation) want predictable and
comfortable careers. We then figure out the logic of that model, what it would
predict for dependent variables of interest (what institutions look like,
content of public policy, whatever), and compare with reality. It is just the
same as simple economic supply and demand models, or maybe a hair more complex
since those can say that both buyers and sellers want to maximize money.
My sense is that once we look at more than one preference for a class of
individuals--much less let each individual have his own--that the models get too
complicated to be of much use. Of course they are more realistic, but we can't
use them for anything.
My remark about Japanologists might seem condescending (though of course to
myself as well), but the discussions among some of my colleagues here at
Michigan--not to mention the diagrams they draw or worse still generate on
computer-driven overheads--don't seem too closely related to this stuff. For
better or worse.