Constituted Groups

The paper presents a novel approach to the study of organized groups. It introduces a simple and well-defined—though idealized—model designed to highlight and facilitate discussion of the central features of such groups. On the basis of this model, labelled constituted groups, several important notions and problems are reopened and reassessed, including the indispensability of the group level in social explanations, the supervenience of group outcomes on individual inputs, the notions of group agency and rationality, and the attribution of responsibility for group actions. Despite the familiarity of these issues, the model’s distinctive contribution lies in its ability to integrate a wide range of non-reductive claims within a conceptually simple and fundamentally individualistic framework.