Integration, deregulation, and individuation: A triangular model Of Durkheim’s “Suicide”

Sociologists have often tried to formalise the explanatory model that seemingly underpins Durkheim’s analysis by linking the suicide rate to two exogeneous variables, integration and regulation. Problematically, this interpretation conflicts with the theory explicitly put forward by Durkheim. In contrast, this article shows that we can easily formalise the latter if, like Durkheim, we focus on the internal composition of the suicide rate, and if we add to integration and regulation a third variable that has almost always been omitted, namely individuation, and 3) we combine these variables within a three-dimensional compositional model. This model not only recovers the main empirical predictions of Suicide, but also highlights some of Durkheim’s major theoretical insights.