Individualism
“Individualism” is often credited for initiative and blamed for social breakdown. In practice, many outcomes attributed to individualism are produced by systems that assign responsibility to individuals while centralizing control elsewhere.
Definition
Individualism refers to a framework in which responsibility, risk, and decision-making are primarily assigned to individuals rather than shared through collective institutions or structures.
Technical meaning vs common usage
Technical meaning:
A design orientation that locates accountability, incentives, and consequences at the individual level within laws, markets, and administrative systems.
Common usage:
A personal value emphasizing independence, self-reliance, or personal freedom.
How the term gets stretched or misused
Treated as a personality trait rather than a system design
Used to explain outcomes without examining rules that allocate risk
Conflated with autonomy even when choices are tightly constrained
Invoked to justify outcomes produced by structural limits
Where the power sits
Power in individualistic systems often sits upstream of the individual. Institutions set the rules that determine eligibility, pricing, liability, and enforcement, while individuals bear the consequences of those rules. This arrangement can preserve centralized control while shifting risk, blame, and compliance costs downward.
This does not mean…
Individuals have full control over outcomes
Collective institutions are absent
Responsibility is voluntary
Choice implies meaningful alternatives
Why precision matters
When individualism is treated as a value, failures are attributed to personal effort or character. When treated as a system design, failures point to how risk and responsibility are distributed. Precision explains why individuals can be held accountable for outcomes they did not meaningfully control.
Neutrality note
This definition describes individualism as a system-level allocation of responsibility and risk, not as an endorsement or critique of personal values, cultural norms, or political ideology.
Related HISW
Words Matter: Collective Responsibility, Solidarity
Basics: Risk Allocation
Explainers: How Systems Shift Responsibility
Sources
Sources below explain how individual responsibility is embedded in legal, economic, and administrative systems.
Congressional Research Service — Risk Allocation in Public Policy (2020) https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46545
National Academies of Sciences — A Framework for Understanding Risk Allocation (2017) https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/24635