The Interdisciplinary Research Programme of Methodological Individualism: Back to Its Foundations
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: According to methodological individualism any scientific explanation in the social sciences should have recourse to individual beliefs, wishes, intentions and actions. This article sets forth two practical reasons to endorse a clear-cut, classical version of methodological individualism as a research programme in the social sciences. The first one is that methodological individualism should lead to fundamental heuristic hypotheses. The second reason is that methodological individualism has the epistemological strength of producing statements open to logical refutation.The present article questions highly sophisticated accounts of methodological individualism. It suggests instead four tenets to be a valid research programme in the social sciences underscoring an intuitive language to analyze social phenomena. By doing so, it reviews some distinctive features of methodological individualism: Max Weber’s ideal types, Joseph Schumpeter’s notion of given behaviour, Friedrich Hayek’s concept of individual action and Jon Elster’s account of explanatory mechanisms.
DOI: 10.46298/jpe.13056
Author: Francisco J. Bellido
Institution: Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4391801248