International Relations. A self-Study Guide to Theory

more than the sum of the parts (ontological holism, often called ontologi-
cal structuralism). “Structure”/the “whole” is ontologically prior to agen-
cy. Agency can thus mostly be explained by the operation of this structur-
al whole (epistemological and methodological holism). The explanation 
of agency (such as individual behavior or individual identity) always oc-
curs “in terms” of structure. “Structure” is also epistemologically “prior” 
to agency in that the structure is seen as the “cause” for actors’ behavior. 
In other words, agency is explained as a causal effect of structure. 
2) Social existence IS agency; in other words, the “being” of the world is indi-
vidual actors constructing and reconstructing their worlds. The whole (for 
example “society”) is not more than the parts (the individual actors). Onto-
logically there is no social whole with its own quality. There are only indi-
viduals that act according to their (internal) “properties”; that is, their indi-
vidual interests (ontological individualism). Social worlds then can mostly 
be explained by their construction through the agency of individual human 
actors (epistemological/methodological individualism). The “social” is fi-
nally explained “in terms” of the parts (actor’s individual interests). 
You can easily see that “individualists” and “holists” agree that agents and 
structures are somehow interdependent. However, they assume this interrela-
tion in different ways. Theorists committed to the notion of epistemological 
and methodological individualism share the ontological view that actors are 
the central elements in social systems. In terms of explanations, social struc-
tures are the result and the consequences of actions and interactions between 
individual actors. The structures can be reduced to the properties and interac-
tions of agents. You are familiar with this concept from what you have 
learned about reductionism. Theorists committed to methodological holism, 
on the other hand, view actors as being embedded in (ontologically prior) so-

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cial structures that constrain, enable or generally shape individuals’ disposi-
tions and capacities to act. Structure has irreducible “emergent” properties 
that determine an actor’s course of action. Here social structure should be 
taken as the primary and most significant explanatory factor.
The agent-structure-problem resembles the more general problem of indi-
vidual/society, or the micro/macro problem. In IR theory, we will find both 
structuralist views that point to the structural effects on an actor’s behavior 
(structuralist theories) and actor-centered views emphasizing the relevance of 
action’s effects on structure (agency-centered theories). However, you will 
learn that there is a third philosophical “solution” to the agent-structure-
problem which ontologically assumes agency and structure are mutually de-
pendent. Here, the “problem” arises when it comes to explanation: if there is 
agency and structure in the social world and neither is ontologically prior, 
how can you then explain their interrelation? How can you give equal ex-
planatory weight to agency and structure? As you will see, this third ontolog-
ical perspective that agency and structure are ontologically interdependent 
poses a serious challenge to our traditional notion of causality as a temporal 
relation of cause and effect, with the cause preceding the effect in time. As an 
explanation, this ontological position of mutual dependency is usually ex-
pressed in the notion of “mutual constitution”. Agency and structure mutually