IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/cambje/v25y2001i6p765-83.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Toboso, Fernando

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. Copyright 2001 by Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Toboso, Fernando, 2001. "Institutional Individualism and Institutional Change: The Search for a Middle Way Mode of Explanation," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 25(6), pages 765-783, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:cambje:v:25:y:2001:i:6:p:765-83
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. František Svoboda, 2007. "Za obzor neoklasické ekonomie: cesta k principům nové institucionální ekonomie [Beyond the horizon of neoclassical economics: navigation to principles of the new institutional economics]," Politická ekonomie, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2007(4), pages 539-557.
    2. Svetlana Kirdina, 2015. "Methodological individualism and methodological institutionalism for interdisciplinary research," Montenegrin Journal of Economics, Economic Laboratory for Transition Research (ELIT), vol. 11(1), pages 53-67.
    3. Jean-Baptiste Fleury & Alain Marciano, 2022. "Methodological Individualism and the Foundations of the "Law and Economics" movement," Post-Print hal-03820441, HAL.
    4. Рубинштейн Александр Яковлевич, "undated". "Теория Опекаемых Благ И Патернализм В Экономических Теориях: Общее И Особенное [The Theory of Patronized Goods and the Paternalism in Economic Theories: General and Special]," Working papers a:pru175:ye:2015:1, Institute of Economics.
    5. Gonzalo Caballero, 2004. "Instituciones e historia económica: enfoques y teorías institucionales," Revista de Economía Institucional, Universidad Externado de Colombia - Facultad de Economía, vol. 6(10), pages 135-157, January-J.
    6. Fernando Toboso, 2006. "Old organizational issues from a new institutional economics perspective. Some introductory remarks," Revista de Analisis Economico – Economic Analysis Review, Universidad Alberto Hurtado/School of Economics and Business, vol. 21(2), pages 3-11, December.
    7. Alberto ZAZZARO, 2002. "How Heterodox is the Heterodoxy of the Monetary Circuit Theory? The Nature of Money and the Microeconomy of the Circuit," Working Papers 163, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    8. Essiane, Patrick-Nelson Daniel, 2020. "De l'Ancienne Economie Institutionnelle à la Nouvelle Economie Institutionnelle: une introduction à quelques débats [Old Institutional Economics and New Institutional Economics: an Introduction to ," MPRA Paper 102858, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Anthony J. Evans, 2010. "Only Individuals Choose," Chapters, in: Peter J. Boettke (ed.), Handbook on Contemporary Austrian Economics, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Stefanović Zoran & Petrović Dragan, 2016. "The ‘Institutions-Individual’ Conceptual Nexus as a Basis of Alternative Economic Methodologies," Economic Themes, Sciendo, vol. 54(1), pages 1-20, March.
    11. Anthony Evans & Nikolai Wenzel, 2013. "A framework for the study of firms as constitutional orders," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 24(1), pages 2-18, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:cambje:v:25:y:2001:i:6:p:765-83. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/cje .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.