Policy Sci (2017) 50:519–526

DOI 10.1007/s11077-017-9292-2

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Rescuing the decision process

Matthew R. Auer1

Published online: 31 July 2017

 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017

Abstract On the occasion of the 50th volume of policy sciences, a former editor considers
which concept from the policy sciences has diffused most widely outside the pages of the
journal. If textbooks on the policy process are any indicator of what’s most valuable about
Lasswell’s policy sciences framework, then the decision process is his most enduring
contribution. Unfortunately, many textbooks conflate the decision process with derivative
policy process concepts, thereby distorting the original and isolating it from a complete set
of diagnostic and prescriptive tools all meant to be deployed together.

Keywords Harold D. Lasswell
Policy sciences
Decision process
Policy

cycles

My observations on Harold D. Lasswell’s contributions to public policy research and

practice are informed by an early-2000s stint as editor of Policy Sciences, but more
profoundly, as a reader of works by contemporary policy scientists and as a teacher of
public policy and public administration. Brewer (2017) and Ascher (2017) reflect on the
work of bringing to publication genuinely problem-oriented, multimethod research,
steeped in actual, concrete (versus hypothetical, generalized) social and political contexts.
In selecting and editing submissions to Policy Sciences, neither Brewer nor Ascher, nor to
my knowledge, any other editor of the journal, insisted on Lasswell’s policy sciences
framework as a prerequisite for publication. Clear writing, well-defined problem narra-
tives, sound methods, and persuasive arguments were the main expectations. Brewer and
Ascher published worthy submissions (see Ascher 2017, 160–161), but only after much

& Matthew R. Auer

Matthew.Auer@uga.edu
1
School of Public and International Affairs, University of Georgia, 204 Candler Hall, Athens,
GA 30609, USA

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winnowing and editorial care. These trends continued during my own tenure as editor: I
helped bring good policy research to light, but only after wading through much darkness.
Few submissions even held to the basic standard of advancing the reader’s understanding
of public policy. Fewer still were clear and persuasive diagnoses of problems or guides for
improving policy. Submissions that were published featured clear problem statements,
contexts that could be located in time and space, well-defined variables, and frank
acknowledgment of gaps in the analysis.
For the purposes of discovering, shaping and sharing sound policy research, Policy
Sciences editors’ roles are important, but the gatekeeping and editorial work of other
experts are more important still. Public policy textbooks, handbooks, and encyclopedia—
how they present the fundamentals of the study of public policy, and how they make
reference to the policy sciences in doing so—are the core concerns of the present note.
Public policy textbooks reach a much wider audience than does Policy Sciences, and
arguably, the downside risks of flawed explanations of the policy process are greater when
the primary consumers are students. Lasswell’s decision process, or more precisely, the
various reformulations and distortions of the decision process deserve particular attention
because secondary source treatments of the decision process are as close as most students
of public policy ever get to insights from Lasswell. Misreadings have continued long after
others have tried to set the record straight (see DeLeon 1999; Auer 2007). Hence, there is
value in laying out first principles, identifying where the critics go off course, and pro-
viding a reference point to prospective authors of articles in this journal, and more vitally
still, to authors of policy textbooks.
In his The Decision Process: Seven Categories of Functional Analysis, Lasswell calls
for an update to our understanding of the ‘‘decision process of government’’ (1956, 1).
Reisman (1981, 105) notes that Lasswell was offering a new heuristic of the policy process
to replace the tripartite concept—legislative, executive, judicial—that dominated since the
time of Aristotle. Lasswell identifies seven analytical categories, but clarifies that the
categories themselves are not sacrosanct. ‘‘Classifications are serviceable when they are
tentative and undogmatic…’’ he observes (Lasswell 1956, 2). The seven categories con-
sider the many elements of policy decisions, and importantly the parties who engage in
those activities. As regular readers of this journal well know, the categories and their
functions are,

• Intelligence The compilation and dissemination of information used by all participants

in the decision process;
• Promotion Efforts to influence others to achieve a preferred outcome;
• Prescription The development and stabilization of norms, such as laws and codes of
conduct;
• Invocation The initial test of a prescription in a particular case;
• Application The final implementation of a prescription in a particular case;
• Appraisal Evaluation of policies and reflection on whether and to what extent policy
goals are achieved; and
• Termination The cancelation or reformulation of policy (after Lasswell 1956, 2;
Lasswell 1963, 15–16).
Lasswell identifies ‘‘structures that are specialized’’ to each function, for example, the
Central Intelligence Agency’s specialized role in the intelligence function; Congress and
the prescribing function; the invoking and applying functions of the courts, and so on
(Lasswell 1956, 3). He observes that ‘‘…all agencies perform all functions to some extent’’

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(1956, 3), and moreover, understanding which functions are performed by whom and to
what effect requires a comprehensive map of the social process within which decisions are
made. Lasswell makes references to almost all the essential elements of the classic policy
sciences framework within his 1956 decision process essay (e.g., the value categories,
pp. 19–20; social process, pp. 15–16; observational standpoint, p. 23; maximization pos-
tulate, p. 10; problem orientation passim 4). The effect is to locate the decision process
among a set of heuristics that, in aggregate, help users make a comprehensive map of
policy problems and of credible responses.

Decision process: functions or stages?

The decision process and its variants have been referenced in many hundreds, if not
thousands of publications, though in the present analysis, textbooks and handbooks are of
particular interest considering the audiences for those publications. Typical of virtually all
textbook treatments is the presentation of the decision process as a set of stages and/or a
cycle (e.g., Zittoun 2011; Jann and Wegrich 2007; Sapru 2011; Smith and Larimer 2016;
Hogwood and Gunn 1984). Consider, for example, Hupe and Hill’s account (2006, 16):
Lasswell (1956) was one of the first to approach the overall process of the making of
public policy explicitly in terms of ‘phases’ or ‘stages’. He uses that term to refer to a
set of separate and successive steps, thought of as in principle taken in a chrono-
logical order, from initiative via formulation and decision to evaluation and termi-
nation. More specifically, Lasswell (1956) distinguishes between what he calls the
seven ‘stages’ of ‘the decision process’….
Except that Lasswell’s 1956 description of the decision process never mentions the word
‘‘stages.’’ Lasswell does refer to ‘‘cyclical fluctuations’’ whereby the functions ‘‘change’’ in
interdependent fashion (Lasswell 1956, 9). He uses the ‘‘reform wave’’ in municipal
politics to illustrate such a cycle, starting with an appraisal by people who ‘‘stigmatize
activities as lawless, immoral and wasteful,’’ supplemented by ‘‘intelligence media’’ who
‘‘bring more information about how other cities freed themselves from corruption,’’
followed by various constituents’ demands for specific reforms (promotion), and so on
(Lasswell 1956, 9). No sooner than remarking on the cyclical nature of the reform wave,
Lasswell (1956, 9–10) declares:
We are aware of the fact that cycles are rarely if ever ‘perfect’; they do not re-
establish the original state of affairs completely. Political fluctuations are structural
as well as cyclical; new patterns of interaction emerge and become relatively stable,
and the level of conformity between prescription and conduct may be higher or lower
than it was before.
Considering the prominence of the so-called Lasswellian stages heuristic in textbooks and
handbooks, it is striking how little attention Lasswell pays to stages, steps, and cycles in his
own renderings (e.g., 1956; 1971). How did Lasswell’s core concern with functions
become eclipsed by stages? Weible (2014, 7) helpfully identifies an important secondary
source moment when Lasswell’s flexible decision process became jumbled with a
derivative, lock-step policy cycle: Charles Jones’s popular An Introduction to the Study of
Public Policy (Jones 1970). Jones, on introducing the policy cycle concept, concedes:

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‘Policy cycles’ is not the best term for what I want to discuss now because it implies
more neatness of pattern than I really mean to suggest. I can’t think of another
appropriate term, however, and I do want to build on the notion of a ‘round of events
or phenomena that recur regularly and in the same sequence’ (a dictionary definition
of ‘cycle’) (Jones 1970, 120 quoted in Weible 2014, 7).
Indeed, the ‘‘neatness of pattern’’ has been fodder for repeated criticism, with policy cycles
and Lasswell’s decision process treated as one and the same. Jenkins-Smith and Sabatier
(1993, 3) declare that:
…the stages model is not really a causal model at all. It lacks identifiable forces to
drive the policy process from one stage to another and generate activity within any
given stage… Because it lacks causal mechanisms, the stages model does not provide
a clear basis for empirical hypothesis testing (italics in the original).
This criticism should be arrayed against Lasswell’s observation that the decision functions
are interdependent, with processes and outcomes in one function affecting processes and
outcomes in others (1956, 9). Moreover, Lasswell developed the decision process as a
framework for locating causal relationships worth testing; he did not claim that the process,
itself, was a causal model. Definitions of ‘‘framework,’’ ‘‘theory,’’ and ‘‘model’’ by Ostrom
(1999, 39–41) and McGinnis and Ostrom (2014, 30) are helpful in placing the decision
process in the category of ‘‘frameworks’’:
A framework provides the basic vocabulary of concepts and terms that may be used
to construct the kinds of causal explanations expected of a theory. Frameworks
organize diagnostic, descriptive, and prescriptive inquiry. A theory posits specific
causal relationships among core variables (McGinnis and Ostrom 2014, 30).
Descriptive inaccuracy is another charge leveled against the stages heuristic, and since the
stages heuristic ‘‘lean(s) heavily on Lasswell…,’’ then the decision process is also
implicated (Jenkins-Smith and Sabatier 1993, 2). Jenkins-Smith and Sabatier note: ‘‘The
stages metaphor inappropriately emphasizes the policy cycle as the temporal unit of
analysis.’’ (italics in original).
It is unlikely Lasswell would contest this view, since he never postulated the decision
process as a temporal model or predictive clock. Lasswell recognized functions occurring
at multiple levels, by multiple actors (Lasswell 1956, 3), and one or more functions playing
out in the performance of other functions. To illustrate: appraisal statements made by the
Supreme Court or made to the Court, Lasswell observed, ‘‘are typically imbedded with…
invocation or final judgment’’ (Lasswell 1956, 18) and ‘‘The Court performs a positive
intelligence function when public attention is focused upon its deliberations and decision’’
(Lasswell 1956, 17). Lasswell was also conscious of ruptures in the decision process, and
how usurpations of power, in particular, risked jeopardizing policymaking processes:
Unless there are intelligence structures that perform the comprehensive information
gathering-planning role, the inclusive frame of reference appropriate to planning is
not likely to appear. Unless promotional organs are provided for, the role of out-
spokenness and controversy may be lost sight of, and at least temporarily forced
underground. If the prescribing function is not separated from top organs of invo-
cation and application, the prescriptive codes of the community may be viewed in
terms of executive expediency. The appraisal function, unless independently

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embodied, is lost in a fog of promotion manipulations and applications of circum-

scribed scope (Lasswell and McDougal (1992, 1261).
Some heirs of Lasswell’s approach are careful to point out, like Lasswell, that the functions
can operate in complex, nonlinear, and interdependent ways. DeLeon, for example, asserts
that Brewer and DeLeon’s reinterpretation of the decision process was never intended to be
‘‘unidirectional or lack(ing) feedback capabilities’’ (DeLeon 1999, 25).
Yet another complaint with the stages heuristic, and by association, Lasswell’s
framework is its putatively ‘‘…legalistic, top-down focus’’ (italics in original) (Jenkins-
Smith and Sabatier 1993, 3). Howlett et al. (2009, 11) write: ‘‘Lasswell’s analysis of the
policy-making process focused…on decision-making within government and had little to
say about external influences on the state.’’ These are surprising assertions considering
Lasswell’s long-standing interest in how social scientists can and do participate in deci-
sions affecting public life, including in arenas dominated neither by legislatures, executive
branch actors, nor courts. Lasswell declares in Pre-view of Policy Sciences (1971, 1):
In complex societies the agencies of official decision do not account for many of the
most important choices that affect men’s lives. In the interest of realism, it is
essential to give full deference to the study of semiofficial and nonofficial processes.
His 1963 The Future of Political Science is a 256-page exploration of the practicing
political scientist in all seven functions of the decision process in both ‘‘official’’ and
‘‘unofficial’’ policymaking contexts (Lasswell 1963). Lasswell, himself, was a participant
in both types of arenas in the context of the Cornell-Peru Project in the Peruvian highland
village of Vicos. The Cornell-Peru Project was a 15-year ‘‘intervention’’ whose main
participants and intended beneficiaries were community members (Dobyns et al. 1971).
The broadest goal of the project was to devolve power to the community, and with that
power, to promote human dignity (see Holmberg 1971, 44).1 In Vicos, Cornell-Peru
Project staff in collaboration with peasants were the primary decision-making actors;
district-level governmental authorities and former hacienda elites played far less
prominent roles (see, especially, Holmberg 1971, 47–55).
Explorations of decision processes functioning in unofficial arenas or that crisscross
between official and unofficial arenas are well represented in the policy sciences literature.
Prominent illustrations are Reisman’s study of ‘‘microlaw’’ in everyday human encounters
(Reisman 1999),2 Brunner and Lynch’s study of an Alaskan coastal community’s adap-
tation to sea-level rise and climate change (Brunner and Lynch 2010), Fleeger and
Becker’s (2010) multistakeholder, multijurisdictional application of the decision process to
local-level wildfire management systems in Oregon, and Lurie and Clark’s (2001) research
on sustainability planning in Wyoming.

1
Both the impetuses for and outcomes of the Cornell-Peru Project are subjects of debate, as is Lasswell’s
involvement in the project (see Ross 2010).
2
Reisman writes (1999: 2), boldly:
Mainstream contemporary legal theory—with its emphasis on the state as the centerpiece of any legal
system and, for many theorists, its primary, if not exclusive, source of law—misdirects our attention
from the full realm of law. The law of the state may be important, but law, real law, is found in all
human relations, from the simplest, briefest encounter between two people to the most inclusive and
permanent type of interaction. Law is a property of interaction. Real law is generated, reinforced,
changed, and terminated continually in the course of almost all of human activity (italics in original).

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The broader framework of the policy sciences

Jurisprudence for a Free Society is the closest approximation to a course textbook by

Lasswell, himself, co-authored by his long-time thought partner, Myres McDougal
(Lasswell and McDougal 1992). It was the outgrowth of their decades-long, Law, Science
and Policy seminar taught at the Yale Law School. Jurisprudence examines a broad range
of decisions—legal, official, unofficial, as well as widely obeyed norms that are codified
nowhere and yet contribute to public and civic order. Policies and how they are made,
Lasswell and McDougal insisted, could not be properly appreciated without examining the
larger social process. ‘‘The legal process,’’ they wrote (1992, 335), ‘‘is part of the process
of decision which in turn is part of the social process as a whole.’’ The social process and
its basic constituents (participants, perspectives, arenas (or situations), base values,
strategies, outcomes, and effects) are the substrate from which decisions emerge. A
thorough understanding of policy decisions cannot be separated from the social process, or
for that matter from other parts of the policy sciences framework, including problem
orientation (clarification of goals; identification of trends and conditions; projection of
future outcomes in the absence of policy intervention; analysis of policy alternatives). To
accuse the decision process of being insufficiently comprehensive is akin to blaming a
soloist for being a bad trio.
Problem orientation, the social process, and the decision process are all component parts
of the policy scientist’s tool kit, and they are meant to be deployed as a set. They are all
part of one framework. As Weible (2014, 9) notes, the ‘‘decision process’’ is valuable to
‘‘the community of policy scientists for whom the decision process is part of the diagnostic
criteria of the policy sciences framework…’’. One might hope that future authors of
textbooks on the policy process will encounter Weible’s effort to set the record straight
(including distinguishing the decision process from ‘‘policy cycles’’) even as policy sci-
entists are likely to challenge Weible’s contention that Lasswell’s approach is purely
diagnostic. The ‘‘policy sciences of democracy’’ was not merely meant to identify prob-
lems and explain policy processes and outcomes. The central motivation was to map
policies in a comprehensive fashion, inclusive of better policy recommendations.
Making reference to the bitterly contested 2016 US presidential election and the fraying
of the fabric of democracy in America, a recent contribution to the policy forum of Science
called for a ‘‘translational science of democracy that maintains scientific rigor while
actively promoting the health of the body politic’’ (Neblo et al. 2017, 914). The authors
note that in the late 1940s, around 20% of articles appearing in the American Political
Science Review made policy recommendations, compared to fewer than 1% today (Neblo
et al. 2017, 914 quoting Kahan et al.). Lasswell, the authors observe, called for ‘‘…an
applied as well as a general science of politics, an applied science that bears much the same
relation to the general science of politics that medical science bears to general physiology’’
(Neblo et al. 2017, 914 quoting Lasswell).
Over the years, policy scientists have done just that—deploying the policy sciences,
including the decision process, for the purpose of making concrete policy recommenda-
tions. The contexts for these recommendations range from local-level preparations for
climate change (Tryhorn and Lynch, 2010), to economic policymaking in developing
countries (Ascher forthcoming), to the search for common ground among proponents and
adversaries of conservation policies (Clark et al. 2005), among many other policy matters.
Surveying society’s many challenges, and prescribing a role for political scientists to
play, Neblo et al. (2017, 914) call for ‘‘translational applications of the science of

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politics….’’ They evoke Lasswell’s own commitment to this endeavor. The policy sciences
toolkit continues to offer a comprehensive approach to map complex policy problems and
organize the policy expert’s thinking about interventions. Yet, broad diffusion of the policy
sciences remains a work in progress (Clark and Wallace 2015). Indeed, as Brewer (2017)
acknowledges, somewhat wistfully, the policy sciences is ‘‘…still ‘emerging’, maybe
forever.’’
Conceivably, sustained threats to democracy might galvanize interest in the policy
sciences, generally, and focus attention on Lasswell’s flexible, decision process, specifi-
cally. Future translations of Lasswell’s approach in college textbooks and handbooks, we
can only hope, will present the decision process as originally intended: as a set of func-
tional categories designed to clarify and improve policy decision making, to be used in
conjunction with other policy sciences framing tools.

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