Revisiting Methodological Individualism in Game Theory: The Contributions of Schelling and Bacharach

The purpose of this contribution is to illustrate how both Schelling and Bacharach’s methodologies can help scholars bring a new approach to behavioral game theory in which the nature of usual standard methodological individualism is insufficiently questioned. I aim to show that both Schelling and Bacharach question the nature of interactive rationality. They provide original insight concerning (i) the conditions of possibility of the existence of determinate solutions and (ii) the resolution process of games. Furthermore, their questioning of the methodological implications of the well-known trio of standard game theory (common knowledge, the transparency of reasons and the reduction of "strategic uncertainty" to "physical uncertainty") offers some ideas on how to build an alternative theory of games. As forerunners, they open an ongoing research program which can still be a fruitful source of methodological innovation regarding interactive rationality and its collective determinants.