Methodological Individualism and Holism in Political Science: A Reconciliation

Methodological Individualism and Generosity

Today a convergence between the fields of anthropology and economics has re-emerged after decades during which the dictates of methodological individualism, as strikingly elucidated by Kenneth Arrow, had seriously limited and hampered effective scholarship in studies of economic and social development in developing countries. A new generation of development economists represented by Spolaori an...

Meanings of Methodological Individualism

Advocacy of ‘methodological individualism’ is a widespread, especially among economists. However, the term is rarely defined with adequate precision and some crucial ambiguities are explored in this article. Among these is the commonplace ambivalence over whether explanations should be in terms of individuals alone, or in terms of individuals plus relations between them. It is shown that a grea...

Political Science, Biometric Theory, and Twin Studies: A Methodological Introduction

As political scientists begin to incorporate biological influences as explanatory factors in political behavior, the need to present a methodological road map for utilizing biometric genetic theory and twin data is apparent. The classical twin design (CTD) remains the most popular design for initial examinations of the source of variance among social and political behaviors, and a vast majority...

Is Methodological Individualism a Reductionist Approach?

Reporting methodological items in randomised experiments in political science