List, Christian 
ORCID: 0000-0003-1627-800X and Spiekermann, Kai ORCID: 0000-0003-4983-5589
(2013)
Methodological individualism and holism in political science: a reconciliation.
American Political Science Review, 107 (4).
pp. 629-643.
ISSN 0003-0554
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Abstract
Political science is divided between methodological individualists, who seek to explain political phenomena by reference to individuals and their interactions, and holists (or non-reductionists), 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 behaviour, individual-level descriptions do not always capture all explanatorily salient properties, and (ii) non-reductionistic explanations are mandated when social regularities are robust to changes in their individual-level realization. We characterize the dividing line between phenomena requiring non-reductionistic explanation and phenomena permitting individualistic explanation and give examples from the study of ethnic conflicts, social-network theory, and international-relations theory.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJourna... |
| Additional Information: | © 2013 American Political Science Association |
| Divisions: | Government Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method CPNSS |
| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) J Political Science > JA Political science (General) |
| Date Deposited: | 09 Oct 2013 09:13 |
| Last Modified: | 06 Nov 2024 22:57 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/53455 |
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