Methodological Individualism in Economics

Francis Wooley at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative does a public service by explaining why economics is dominated by methodological individualism. I'm personally rather more critical of the approach, the more multi-paradigmatic field of political science was definitely a better fit for me, but any economist who takes time to discuss the issue deserves a shout out (be sure to read the comments). Economics does seem relatively unwelcoming towards other paradigms, so it's particularly important that economists realize that they are working within a particular paradigm.

What I wish was acknowledged was that this paradigm can be restrictive, the set of problems that can be examined within this paradigm is more limited than that available to those using multiple paradigms to investigate problems. Also, the paradigm's limitations tend to give an illusion of certainty and precision that's not really justifiable. Still, it's what economists do and there's a lot of value added for this approach. Especially when the alternative is the lazy appeals to culture we see too often in newspapers, and criticized in the post. Cultural explanations can be done well, but it rarely filters into the media in an intelligible form.

I do suggest reading it alongside "We Aren't the World." (hat tip Rod Dreher, whose post I will hopefully take up later).

[Updated to add in missing link and to make somewhat clearer. Worthwhile Canadian Initiative doesn't acknowledge the downsides to the approach nearly as much as I'd like, but it's great to see a mainstream economist acknowledging the existence of the paradigm. It is of course a major topic among a lot of non-mainstream economists, but rarely mentioned by more mainstream ones.]