Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-r5d9c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-31T23:39:01.920Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Methodological Individualism and Holism in Political Science: A Reconciliation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2013

CHRISTIAN LIST  and
KAI SPIEKERMANN
CHRISTIAN LIST*
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
KAI SPIEKERMANN*
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
*
Christian List is Professor of Political Science and Philosophy, Departments of Government and Philosophy, LSE, London WC2A 2AE, UK.
Kai Spiekermann is Associate Professor of Political Philosophy, Department of Government, LSE, London WC2A 2AE, UK.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Political science is divided between methodological individualists, who seek to explain political phenomena by reference to individuals and their interactions, and holists (or nonreductionists), who consider some higher-level social entities or properties such as states, institutions, or cultures ontologically or causally significant. We propose a reconciliation between these two perspectives, building on related work in philosophy. After laying out a taxonomy of different variants of each view, we observe that (i) although political phenomena result from underlying individual attitudes and behavior, individual-level descriptions do not always capture all explanatorily salient properties, and (ii) nonreductionistic explanations are mandated when social regularities are robust to changes in their individual-level realization. We characterize the dividing line between phenomena requiring nonreductionistic explanation and phenomena permitting individualistic explanation and give examples from the study of ethnic conflicts, social-network theory, and international-relations theory.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 107 , Issue 4 , November 2013 , pp. 629 - 643
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Arrow, K. J. 1994. “Methodological Individualism and Social Knowledge.” American Economic Review 84 (2): 1–9.Google Scholar
Brady, H. E. 2008. “Causation and Explanation in Social Science.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Methodology, eds. Collier, D., Brady, H. E., and Box-Steffensmeier, J. M.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bratman, M. E. 1999. Faces of Intention: Selected Essays on Intention and Agency. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchanan, J. M., and Tullock, G.. 1967. The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Chalmers, D. 1996. The Conscious Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Christakis, N. A., and Fowler, J. H.. 2009. Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. New York: Little Brown.Google Scholar
Dawkins, R. 1986. The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Dennett, D. 1987. The Intentional Stance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Dryzek, J. S. 2010. “Rhetoric in Democracy: A Systemic Appreciation.” Political Theory 38 (3): 319–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elster, J. 1982. “The Case for Methodological Individualism.” Theory and Society 11 (4): 453–82.Google Scholar
Elster, J. 1985. Making Sense of Marx. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Elster, J. 1989. Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, J. M. 2006. Generative Social Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Fearon, J. D. 1991. “Counterfactuals and Hypothesis Testing in Political Science.” World Politics 43 (2): 169–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fearon, J. D., and Laitin, D.. 2003. “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War.” American Political Science Review 97 (1): 75–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, J. 1974. “Special Sciences (Or: The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis).” Synthese 28 (2): 97–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franzese, R. J. Jr. 2009. “Multicausality, Context-Conditionality, and Endogeneity.” In The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics, eds. Stokes, S. C. and Boix, C.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 27–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
French, P. 1984. Collective and Corporate Responsibility. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, M. 2006. A Theory of Political Obligation: Membership, Commitment, and the Bonds of Society. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Godfrey-Smith, P. 2009. Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greve, J. 2012. “Emergence in Sociology.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 42 (2): 188–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, N. 2004. “Two Concepts of Causation.” In Causation and Counterfactuals, eds. Collins, J., Hall, N., and Paul, L. A.. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 225–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hay, C. 2006. “Political Ontology.” In The Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis, eds. Goodin, R. E. and Tilly, C.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 78–96.Google Scholar
Hayek, F. A. v. 1942. “Scientism and the Study of Society.” Economica 9 (35): 267–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heath, J. 2011. “Methodological Individualism.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Zalta, E. N.. Available at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/methodological-individualism/.Google Scholar
Hedström, P., and Ylikoski, P.. 2010. “Causal Mechanisms in the Social Sciences.” Annual Review of Sociology 36: 49–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. 2007. “Meanings of Methodological Individualism.” Journal of Economic Methodology 14 (2): 211–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jervis, R. 1997. System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kim, J. 1998. Mind in a Physical World: An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental Causation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, J. 2005. Physicalism or Something Near Enough. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kincaid, H. 1986. “Reduction, Explanation, and Individualism.” Philosophy of Science 53 (4): 492–513.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, P. 1984. “1953 and All That. A Tale of Two Sciences.” The Philosophical Review 93 (3): 335–73.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kornhauser, L. 2008. “Aggregate Rationality in Adjudication and Legislation.” Politics, Philosophy and Economics 7 (1): 5–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laver, M. 1997. Private Desires, Political Action: An Invitation to the Politics of Rational Choice. Revised edition. London: Sage Publications.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, D. 1973. Counterfactuals. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
List, C., and Menzies, P.. 2009. “Non-Reductive Physicalism and the Limits of the Exclusion Principle.” Journal of Philosophy CVI (9): 475–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
List, C., and Pettit, P.. 2002. “Aggregating Sets of Judgments: An Impossibility Result.” Economics and Philosophy 18 (1): 89–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
List, C., and Pettit, P.. 2011. Group Agency: The Possibility, Design, and Status of Corporate Agents. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Little, D. 1991. Varieties of Social Explanation. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Lukes, S. 1968. “Methodological Individualism Reconsidered.” The British Journal of Sociology 19 (2): 119–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macdonald, G., and Pettit, P.. 1981. Semantics and Social Science. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Maoz, Z., and Russett, B.. 1993. “Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace, 1946–1986.” American Political Science Review 87 (3): 624–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
March, J., and Olsen, J.. 1984. “The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life.” American Political Science Review 78 (3): 734–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mansbridge, J., Bohman, J., Chambers, S., Christiano, T., Fung, A., Parkinson, J., Thompson, D. F., and Warren, M. E.. 2012. “A Systemic Approach to Deliberative Democracy.” In Deliberative Systems, eds. Parkinson, J. and Mansbridge, J.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–26.Google Scholar
Menzies, P., and List, C.. 2010. “The Causal Autonomy of the Special Sciences.” In Emergence in Mind, eds. Mcdonald, C. and Mcdonald, G.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 108–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mill, J. S. 1974 [1843]. A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
North, D. 1993. “Economic Performance through Time.” Lecture to the Memory of Alfred Nobel, December 9, 1993. Available at: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1993/north-lecture.html.Google Scholar
Ostrom, E. 2009. “A General Framework for Analyzing Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems.” Science 325 (5939): 419–22.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Parsons, T. 1937. The Structure of Social Action. New York and London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Peters, B. G. 2012. Institutional Theory in Political Science. 3rd ed.New York and London: Continuum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pettit, P. 1993. The Common Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pettit, P. 2001. A Theory of Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pettit, P. 2003. “Groups with Minds of their Own.” In Socializing Metaphysics, ed. Schmitt, F.. New York: Rowan and Littlefield, 167–93.Google Scholar
Popper, K. R. 1944. “The Poverty Of Historicism I&II.” Economica 11: 86–103, 119–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Popper, K. R. 1945a. The Open Society and Its Enemies. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Popper, K. R. 1945b. “The Poverty Of Historicism III.” Economica 12: 69–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Putnam, H. 1967. “The Nature of Mental States.” In Art, Mind, and Religion, eds. Capitan, W. H. and Merrill, D. D.. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 37–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rapp, T., Schwägerl, C., and Traufetter, G.. 2010. “How China and India Sabotaged the UN Climate Summit.” Spiegel online, 5 May 2010. Available at http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-copenhagen-protocol-how-china-and-india-sabotaged-the-un-climate-summit-a-692861-3.html (Accessed October 26, 2012).Google Scholar
Rosenberg, A. 1997. “Reductionism Redux: Computing the Embryo.” Biology and Philosophy 12: 445–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, B. 1913. “On the Notion of Cause.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 13: 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Satz, D., and Ferejohn, J. 1994. “Rational Choice and Social Theory.” Journal of Philosophy 91 (2): 71–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sawyer, R. K. 2002. “Nonreductive Individualism. Part I—Supervenience and Wild Disjunction.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 32 (4): 537–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sawyer, R. K. 2003. “Nonreductive Individualism. Part II—Social Causation.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 33 (2): 203–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sawyer, R. K. 2005. Social Emergence: Societies as Complex Systems. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scharpf, F. W. 1997. Games Real Actors Play: Actor-Centered Institutionalism in Policy Research. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, J. 1908. Das Wesen und der Hauptinhalt der Theoretischen Nationaloekonomie. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot.Google Scholar
Searle, J. R. 1995. The Construction of Social Reality. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Searle, J. R. 2010. Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smuts, J. C. 1926. Holism and Evolution. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Stoljar, D. 2009. “Physicalism.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Zalta, E. N.. Available at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/entries/physicalism.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stoljar, D. 2010. Physicalism. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tilly, C. 2001. “Mechanisms in Political Processes.” Annual Review of Political Science 4 (1): 21–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tollefsen, D. P. 2002. “Collective Intentionality and the Social Sciences.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 32 (1): 25–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuomela, R. 2007. The Philosophy of Sociality: The Shared Point of View. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuomela, R. 2010. “Holistic Social Causation and Explanation.” In Explanations, Prediction, and Confirmation, eds. Dieks, D.et al.Heidelberg: Springer.Google Scholar
Udehn, L. 2001. Methodological Individualism: Background, History and Meaning. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Udehn, L. 2002. “The Changing Face of Methodological Individualism.” Annual Review of Sociology 28: 479–507.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vermeule, A. 2012. The System of the Constitution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Victor, D. G. 2011. Global Warming Gridlock: Creating More Effective Strategies for Protecting the Planet. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watkins, J. W. 1952. “The Principle of Methodological Individualism.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 3 (10): 186–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watkins, J. W. 1955. “Methodological Individualism: A Reply.” Philosophy of Science 22 (1): 58–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watkins, J. 1957. “Historical Explanation in the Social Sciences.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 8 (30): 104–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, M. 1978. Economy and Society. Transl. Roth, G. and Wittich, C.. Vol. 1. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Wedeen, L. 2002. “Conceptualizing Culture: Possibilities for Political Science.” American Political Science Review 96 (4): 713–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wendt, A. 1999. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wendt, A. 2004. “The State as Person in International Theory.” Review of International Studies 30 (2): 289–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodward, J. 2009. “Agency and Interventionist Theories.” In The Oxford Handbook of Causation, eds. Beebee, H., Hitchcock, C., and Menzies, P.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 234–62.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

List Supplementary Material

Appendix

Download List Supplementary Material(PDF)
PDF 77.8 KB
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.