POL208Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Archduke Franz Ferdinand Of Austria, Ultimatum Game, Methodological Individualism
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International organizations (un: states, regional organization (e. g. eu, asean, ngos (amnesty, msf, mncs (e. g. walmart, cnpc) Aren"t they, themselves, just collections, more or less structured, of people individual people with biases, interests, etc. Should we look instead at the individuals making the decisions, and how they make the decisions. Particular patterns of behaviour. (e. g. diamond reading: how people deal with uncertainty). The approach that takes this stance is called methodological individualism: abstract structures are not enough for explaining the actions of individual people, the individual should be the basic unit of analysis. We talk about states, associations, business corporations, foundations, as if they were individual persons . But only people can be studied as agents. E. g. of exogenous shocks on market: from frost to markets, linked by individual choices (by producers, consumers) Most social scientists are interested in patterns. So, focus is on the role of collectivities, not individuals.
