Methodological individualism

Methodological individualism explains social outcomes by tracing them to the actions, beliefs, and interactions of individuals. It treats institutions and collective patterns as outcomes to explain rather than irreducible causes.

Microfoundations: Explanations of large-scale social patterns grounded in the actions and interactions of smaller-scale units. This is the general explanatory strategy methodological individualism applies to social outcomes.
Methodological holism: An explanatory approach that treats social wholes or structures as irreducible to individual actions. It directly disputes whether social explanations must be grounded in individuals.
Max Weber: A German sociologist whose work analyzed social action, authority, religion, and modernity. Weber's account of sociology centered on interpreting the meaning of individual social action.
Public choice: The application of economic analysis to political behavior and institutions. Public choice models political outcomes through the incentives and choices of individuals.
Emergence: The appearance of system-level properties that arise from interactions among components. The concept tests whether social patterns can be fully explained by their individual-level origins.
Rational choice theory: A framework that models choices as attempts to select preferred outcomes under constraints. It supplies one influential account of how individual choices generate collective results.
Social fact: A social pattern or institution that exists beyond any one individual's beliefs or actions. Holist accounts often treat such facts as causes rather than outcomes to be reduced.
Carl Menger: An Austrian economist who founded the Austrian School and developed a theory of value based on individual preferences. Menger argued that social institutions could be explained through the actions of individuals.
Economic sociology: The study of how social relations and institutions shape economic activity. Its explanations often connect economic structures to individual interaction and social ties.
Downward causation: The influence of higher-level patterns or structures on the behavior of their component parts. It raises the question of whether institutions can causally shape the individuals who sustain them.

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