Institutional Individualism and Institutional Change: The Search for a Mode of Explanation

Posted: 29 Feb 2008

See all articles by Fernando Toboso

Fernando Toboso

University of Valencia - Department of Applied Economics

Date Written: November 2001

Abstract

After noting the lack of enthusiasm of several well-known scholars concerning the adoption of both methodological holism and methodological individualism in its several versions, this paper shows that institutional individualism is a different mode of explanation from both of these and also that it is not the same thing as the so-called Popperian programme of situational analysis. Institutional individualism is a mode of explanation that yields non-systemic and non-reductionist explanations at the same time as it allows for the incorporation into economic theories and models of the many formal and informal institutional aspects surrounding all human interactions, whether these interactions take place within stable structures of legal rules and social norms or whether they attempt to change the said rules and norms. Finally, the paper shows that it is possible for old institutionalists to make institutional individualist analyses of institutional changes while retaining the remaining methodological assumptions of the school. The same is true for new institutionalists. Some examples are offered from both camps.

Keywords: Institutional individualism, Methodological individualism, Holism, Situational analysis, Institutional change

JEL Classification: D41, D23, D72

Suggested Citation

Toboso, Fernando, Institutional Individualism and Institutional Change: The Search for a Mode of Explanation (November 2001). Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol. 25, pp. 765-783, 2001, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=873653

Fernando Toboso (Contact Author)

University of Valencia - Department of Applied Economics ( email )

4F04 Edificio Departamental Oriental
P.O. Box 22.006
Valencia, 33006
Spain

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Abstract Views
695
PlumX Metrics