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Methodological Individualism and Micro–Macro Modeling

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The Palgrave Handbook of Methodological Individualism

Abstract

This contribution addresses the relation between (macro) hypotheses about social collectives (ranging from dyads to societies) on the one hand and (micro) hypotheses about individual actors on the other. This relation is the subject of methodological individualism (MI) and micro–macro modeling. Their ideas are first illustrated with an example: it is shown how the hypothesis that inequality is related to societal political violence can be explained by considering theories about individuals (i.e. micro theories) and relations between the macro and micro factors (bridge assumptions). Next the components of micro–macro explanations are analyzed in detail. One question is whether macro and micro propositions and bridge assumptions are lawful statements, causal singular hypotheses or only correlations. It is shown that bridge assumptions can be empirical and analytical (i.e. logically true) statements. An example of the former is the impact of inequality on individual political deprivation, an example of the latter is the aggregation of individual crimes to the crime rate. After outlining the major arguments for micro–macro modeling and methodological individualism I illustrate their wide application in the social sciences. I conclude with a discussion of possible problems of micro–macro modeling and MI and a summary of the program of MI.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Collections of essays about MI are Alexander et al. 1987; Buskens et al. 2012; Wagner 2017; Zahle and Finn 2014. For reviews and discussions of MI see Hodgson 2007; Raub 2021b; Udéhn 2002. For discussions of MI (and reductionism) by philosophers see Brodbeck 1958; di Iorio 2015, 2016; Kincaid 1986; Zahle and Kincaid 2019. A textbook on explanation in the social sciences, based on MI, is Parri 2014. See further the special issues 2 and 3 of Cosmos + Taxis, 2016.

  2. 2.

    For expositions and discussions of this theory see Kirchgässner 2008; Opp 2011, 2020a; Raub 2021a. For the different versions see Diekmann 2022; Opp 1999, 2011, 2020a, 2020b: 28–75. See also Knauff and Spohn 2021. A version of this theory that is often applied by sociologists and social psychologists is value expectancy theory. See Feather 1990; Nagengast et al. 2011; Wigfield et al. 2016.

  3. 3.

    About emergence in general and in the social sciences see in particular Bedau and Humphreys 2008; Hempel and Oppenheim 1948: 146–152; Hummell and Opp 1971; Kincaid 2016; Nagel 1961: 366–397; Sawyer 2005: 63–99.

  4. 4.

    Some meanings are listed in Kincaid 1986: 493. About reductionism in general and in the social sciences see Hummell and Opp 1968, 1971; Kincaid 1986, 2016; Malewski 1964; Nagel 1961: 336–366; Nowak 1970; Sawyer 2005; Wagner 2017.

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  1. Sociology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany

    Karl-Dieter Opp

  2. University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Karl-Dieter Opp

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  1. French National Center for Scientific Research, Paris, France

    Nathalie Bulle

  2. Nankai University, Tianjin, China

    Francesco Di Iorio

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Opp, KD. (2023). Methodological Individualism and Micro–Macro Modeling. In: Bulle, N., Di Iorio, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Methodological Individualism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41512-8_18

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