Abstract

After a short description of the economic model of behaviour it is shown that there are two reasons why problems arise if this model is applied to political processes and decisions. First, such decisions are often ‘low cost’, i.e. ‘wrong’ decisions have hardly any impact on the decision maker. Second, the behaviour of single individuals or small groups of individuals is to be explained. The common root of this problem is the difficulty to predict behaviour which is mainly preference governed and not guided by (changing) restrictions. Nevertheless, this should not lead to abolish the economic model because (i) it can be usefully applied also in this area and (ii) a better alternative is hardly available.