What is Old Should Be New Again: Methodological Individualism, Institutional. Analysis and Spontaneous Order

In this paper we revisit the case for methodological individualism for the positive analysis of political economy. We argue that
the basis of methodological individualism implies neither a necessary commitment to atomistic reductionism in explaining social
phenomena nor philosophical individualism resulting in a laissez-faire policy. The point of engaging in spontaneous order analysis
on methodologically individualist grounds is not to make precise predictions per se, but instead to render the purposive actions
of individuals and the meaning of such actions intelligible. Once individuals can be understood as purposive actors whose social
interactions generate patterns of institutions, such as language, money and law, which coordinate their self-interest, then the mystery
of how self-interest coincides with social cooperation under the division of labor, i.e. Paris getting fed, can be understood through
the consistent and persistent application of the economic way of thinking.