| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism. By S. M. Amadae. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. xii, 401 pp. Paper, $19.00, ISBN 0-226-01654-4.)

S. M. Amadae's book

recounts the defeat of Marxism by rational choice liberalism; a philosophy of markets and democracy that was developed, in part, to anchor the foundations of American society during the Cold War. (pp. 2–3)

It explains how the RAND Corporation's systems analysis and rational policy analysis became normative standards in governmental decision making. There are arresting insights into the whole ensemble of defense establishment leaders and institutions. H. Rowan Gaither Jr.'s work at RAND and the Ford Foundation contributed to the supremacy of the "rational actor" (p. 3) paradigm in Cold War America. Amadae then describes how the "empowerment of the defense rationalists" legitimized their ideas of rational and objective policy analysis and "was quickly assimilated into the traditions of political and economic liberalism that underlie the modern experiment with democracy and capitalism" (p. 79).

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