Just a brief sidelight to this debate over Noda, rational choice, culture, etc. How many people on SSJ would have said that Koizumi was not being rational when he defied everyone in his own party (including his former faction leader Mori), public opinion polls that showed that the public was more interested in pension reform than postal reform, and couldn't directly punish the HOC representatives of his own party because they served fixed terms, but nonetheless called a snap general election?

I think this raises some issues in this debate about ex post outcomes and observers views of "rationality" as well. If Noda had implemented his goals as well as Koizumi and his actions wound up being popular with the public and reviving the fortunes of the DPJ, how many of us would say that he was not being a rational actor in retrospect? Another political science problem we share with several other social sciences : we are extremely poor at prediction but better at post-facto explanation, and often engage in "retrospective determinism" (finding what happened to be rationally explanable).

Best,
Ellis Krauss