De deliberatibus disputandum est: a response to Jürg Steiner

Abstract

This article takes issue with Steiner's polemic against the usage of deliberation in rational choice scholarship. I show i) that the reproach that rationalists do not allow for preference change is mistaken; ii) that Steiner does not sufficiently distinguish between normative and positive contributions and iii) that he shields his preferred model against systematic comparisons with strategic models of deliberation. In my view, we need more competing model evaluations rather than misleading attacks against imagined heretics.