Persons, States, Corporations

In a discipline with few uncontested assumptions, most political scientists are committed to some form of methodological individualism, namely the idea that “nothing but individual opportunities, beliefs, and motivations can enter into the explanation of… behavior.” (Elster 1985: 137) And yet, the idea that various sorts of collectives like states, nations, firms, and parties (or even civilizations) display a unitary identity and exercise autonomous agency comparable is pervasive in political science and everyday discourse. Are there analytically cogent reasons for treating groups, states, and other organizations as agents capable of intention and will, as having cognitive and emotional states? Or is this evidence of intellectual laziness or (gasp!) reliance on tacit metaphysical premises? When we talk about states as displaying fear and distrust, ascribe responsibility to nations for injustices committed generations ago, declaim the self-determination rights of colonized peoples, or hold corporations accountable for crimes, do we assume that these collectives are superorganisms with minds of their own, or do we simply engage in metaphorical (“as if”) thinking? Which attributes must collectives possess in order to be treated as subjects: intentionality, personhood, agency, rationality, moral status...? Do these attributes justify ascribing certain rights and duties to them? Are collectives more than the sum of their members or reducible to them? Should we treat organized collectives like corporations as mini-states or as individuals writ large? Is there anything distinctive about the state or is it simply one form of association? Are state and individual the only analytical and normative templates available to political theory? These are among the vexing questions to which this graduate colloquium in political theory will seek to provide systematic answers.