Methodological and normative individualism in "The Calculus"

I came to The Calculus of Consent not as an economist interested in extending economic analysis into the political realm but as a student of sociology -- who influenced by Karl Popper's critical rationalism -- was dissatisfied with what counted as theory in his chosen field and had turned to Smithean classical political economy and the so-called new political economy of the 1960s in search of a theoretical approach to social phenomena that promised a more solid foundation. As a beginning student, I had come across the writings of Hans Albert, the principal advocate of Popperian methodology in Germany, and was instantly fascinated, and convinced, by what he had to say about a methodologically sound empirical social science in general and about the tradition of classical political economy as a general sociological research program (Albert 1967, 1979) in particular. In my dissertation (The two sociologies -- individualism and collectivism in social theory, Vanberg 1975) in which I defended the individualist-economic tradition in social science against the collectivist Comte-Durkheim tradition in sociology I referred, though only once, to The Calculus. Drawing largely on Hayek's writings in the history of social thought, my main interest was in the theoretical tradition that revolves around the twin concepts of the formation of spontaneous orders and of selective evolution (Hayek 1988: 146), a tradition that had little to say about the problems of collective action that The Calculus focuses on. Such neglect of one of the two kinds of order that Hayek (1973: 36ff.) had contrasted namely spontaneous order, exemplified paradigmatically by the market order, and organization, i.e., order created by deliberate coordination -- I found increasingly dissatisfying, and I began to look for contributions that might fall the missing second half of a truly general and consistently individualistic social theory. This led me to return to The Calculus. In my habilitation thesis (Market and organization -- individualistic social theory and the problem of corporate action, Vanberg 1982), this book became one of the major sources, and Buchanan became the most-quoted author. Adapted from the source document.