Hi Folks,

I have been at 11,000 ft without electicity for more than a week (a voluntary hiking trip in the sierras) so have not responded to this. Sorry for the delay!

Rational choice modeling is only as good as one's initial guesses about the actor's preferences, and it's not helpful in a situation where the actor has conflicting preferences (which is undoubtedly the case with Noda and taxes). So it can be very helpful to ASK the actor about his/her preferences. One problem here in figuring out Noda's priorities is that we haven't asked him, and people around him guess different things.

But rational choice would allow an actor to prefer whatever s/he wants.
(see Michael Laver's original edition of The Politics of Private Desires, in which he points out that someone who gets more utility out of diving into an empty swimming pool head first than out of any other activity would be entirely rational in pursuing that option.
Only once of course, since after the dive there will be no more options anyway.) Self-serving means doing what the self wants, but it does not mean others can handily or casually assume that the self wants re-election, or fame, or lots of money, or lots of money sooner rather than even more money later, or anything else. So Noda may prefer holding the DPJ together, or shooting for a chance at a long-term reputation as the guy who saved the Japanese economy by raising taxes enough to fix a deficit.

The greatest contribution that rational choice might be able to make in this (not very appropriate) situation is that if we experiment with various initial preferences for Noda, and look at his choices, we may be forced to recognize some constraints, or some features of the situation, that we
would not otherwise notice. An example would be
figuring out why
legislators might want a pay increase but vote against giving it to themselves. They may make hidden deals with each other to make sure the minimum necessary number will vote FOR it, so that it actually passes, while those in iffy electoral contests heroically vote against it to impress their constituents, assured all the time that they will get the salary increase it anyway.

To echo Ron Dore's comments, sometimes the effort to use the theory can expose more of the (fun and probably
disgusting) politics to view. Also, if you think overly hard about what I've noted above, you may realize that rationality and sanity are different (an insane person with a poor grip on reality could rationally pursue very nutty preferences; what's rational or not is the pursuit. A sane person with a perfectly sound grip on reality and a good command of cause and effect might be unable to make a choice between two conflicting but equally strong preferences
-- and in desperation might flip a coin).

meg mckean