| ID | 127822 |
| Title Proper | Methodological individualism and holism in political science |
| Other Title Information | a reconciliation |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | List, Christian ; Spiekermann, Kai |
| Publication | 2013. |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | 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. |
| `In' analytical Note | American Political Science Review Vol.107, No.4; November 2013: p.629-643 |
| Journal Source | American Political Science Review Vol.107, No.4; November 2013: p.629-643 |
| Key Words | International-Relations Theory ; Ethnic Conflicts ; Conflicts ; Social Entities ; Political Phenomena ; Ontology ; Politics ; Social Network Theory ; International Relations - IR ; Political Methodology ; Political Philosophy |