Decision Making Activities

Outline

 The Policy Process Model

 Six Decision Making Models
 Decision Making in the Real World
The Policy Process

 Process
 Activity
 Participants
Problem Identification

 Activity
 Publicizing societal problems
 Expressing demands for government action

 Participants
 Mass media
 Interest groups
 Citizen initiatives
 Public Opinion
Agenda Setting

 Activity
 Deciding what issues will be decided
 Deciding what problems will be addressed by
government
 Participants
 Mass media
 Elites
 Parties
 Candidates for elective office
Policy Formulation

 Activity
 Developing policy proposals to resolve issues
and ameliorate problems
 Participants
 Executive
 Congressional committees
 Interest groups
 Think tanks
Policy Legitimation

 Activity
 Selecting a proposal
 Developing political support for it
 Enacting it into law
 Deciding on its constitutionality
 Participants
 Prime Minister
 Congress
 Courts
Policy Implementation

 Activity
 Organizing departments and agencies
 Providing payments or services

 Levying taxes

 Participants
 Prime Minister and other Ministers (Cabinet)
 Executive departments and agencies
Policy Evaluation
 Activity
 Reporting outputs of government programs
 Evaluating impacts of policies on target and nontarget
groups
 Proposing changes and reforms
 Participants
 Executive departments and agencies
 Congressional oversight committees
 Mass media
 Think tanks
Decision Making Models

 Cost-Benefit Analysis
 Multiobjectives Models
 Decision Analysis
 Systems Analysis
 Operations Research
 Nominal Group Techniques
Cost Benefit Analysis

 In an era of scarcity, interest in weighing

cost against benefits rises
 Measurement of costs and benefits
 The distributional impacts

 The discount factor, and

 The decision rules

Multiobjectives Models

 Recognition that there are multiple

objectives in the policy and administrative
processes
 Need to calculate the relative importance or
weight of various objectives
Decision Analysis

 Recognition that a decision is not viewed as

isolated because today’s decision depends
on the ones we shall make tomorrow
Systems Analysis

 This approach forces us to look at problems

as systems; assemblies of interdependent
components; 4 basic steps:
 Problem formulation
 Modeling

 Analysis and optimization

 Implementation
Operations Research

 Here the scope of decision making is

narrower:
 Concerned with problems that can be
represented by mathematical models to be
optimized

 Concerned with relatively small problems

Nominal Group Techniques

 Advantages—
 bring together broader perspectives for defining
the problem, more knowledge and information,
easier to implement (buy-in)
 Disadvantages—
 time consuming, expensive, lead to
compromise solutions or reduction of valuable
dissenting opinions (groupthink), no clear focus
for responsibility if things go wrong
Nominal Group Techniques

 When to use a group—

 problem is uncertain, complex, or has the potential
for conflict;
 requires interagency or intergroup cooperation;
 problem and its solution have important personal
and organizational consequences;
 significant, but not immediate deadline pressures,
widespread acceptance and commitment are critical
to successful implementation
Decision Making in the Real
World
 Decision Making in Times of Crisis
 Biases in Decision Making
Decision Making in Times of
Crisis
 Demonstrated that decision making is a very
human affair involving far more than objective
analysis
 Important decisions often made by groups, not
individuals
 Not an entirely rational process
 Some participants more rational than others
 Real limitations to applying a rigorous approach to
every facet of a problem
Biases in Decision Making

 Bounded rationality—people have limits or

boundaries on how rational they can be
 Satisficing—decision makers choose the
first solution alternative that satisfies
minimal decision criteria
Biases in Decision Making

 Seeing only one dimension of uncertainty,

 Giving too much weight to readily available
or recent information
 Being overconfident
 Ignoring the laws of randomness
 Being reluctant to audit and improve
decision making