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Heuristics and policy responsiveness: a research agenda
Theories of policy responsiveness assume that political decision-makers can rationally interpret information about voters’ likely reactions, but can we be sure of this? Political decision-makers face considerable time and information constraints, which are the optimal conditions for displaying decis...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Palgrave Macmillan UK
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9464428/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41304-022-00394-6 |
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author | Butler, Chris Vis, Barbara |
author_facet | Butler, Chris Vis, Barbara |
author_sort | Butler, Chris |
collection | PubMed |
description | Theories of policy responsiveness assume that political decision-makers can rationally interpret information about voters’ likely reactions, but can we be sure of this? Political decision-makers face considerable time and information constraints, which are the optimal conditions for displaying decision-making biases—deviations from comprehensive rationality. Recent research has shown that when evaluating policies, political decision-makers display biases related to heuristics—cognitive rules of thumb that facilitate judgments and decision-making—when evaluating policies. It is thus likely that they also rely on heuristics in other situations, such as when forming judgments of voters’ likely reactions. But what types of heuristics do political decision-makers use in such judgments, and do these heuristics contribute to misjudgements of voters’ reactions? Existing research does not answer these crucial questions. To address this lacuna, we first present illustrative evidence of how biases related to heuristics contributed to misjudgements about voters’ reactions in two policy decisions by UK governments. Then, we use this evidence to develop a research agenda that aims to further our understanding of when political decision-makers rely on heuristics and the effects thereof. Such an agenda will contribute to the literature on policy responsiveness. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9464428 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Palgrave Macmillan UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-94644282022-09-12 Heuristics and policy responsiveness: a research agenda Butler, Chris Vis, Barbara Eur Polit Sci Research Theories of policy responsiveness assume that political decision-makers can rationally interpret information about voters’ likely reactions, but can we be sure of this? Political decision-makers face considerable time and information constraints, which are the optimal conditions for displaying decision-making biases—deviations from comprehensive rationality. Recent research has shown that when evaluating policies, political decision-makers display biases related to heuristics—cognitive rules of thumb that facilitate judgments and decision-making—when evaluating policies. It is thus likely that they also rely on heuristics in other situations, such as when forming judgments of voters’ likely reactions. But what types of heuristics do political decision-makers use in such judgments, and do these heuristics contribute to misjudgements of voters’ reactions? Existing research does not answer these crucial questions. To address this lacuna, we first present illustrative evidence of how biases related to heuristics contributed to misjudgements about voters’ reactions in two policy decisions by UK governments. Then, we use this evidence to develop a research agenda that aims to further our understanding of when political decision-makers rely on heuristics and the effects thereof. Such an agenda will contribute to the literature on policy responsiveness. Palgrave Macmillan UK 2022-09-11 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC9464428/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41304-022-00394-6 Text en © European Consortium for Political Research 2022. Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law. This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic. |
spellingShingle | Research Butler, Chris Vis, Barbara Heuristics and policy responsiveness: a research agenda |
title | Heuristics and policy responsiveness: a research agenda |
title_full | Heuristics and policy responsiveness: a research agenda |
title_fullStr | Heuristics and policy responsiveness: a research agenda |
title_full_unstemmed | Heuristics and policy responsiveness: a research agenda |
title_short | Heuristics and policy responsiveness: a research agenda |
title_sort | heuristics and policy responsiveness: a research agenda |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9464428/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41304-022-00394-6 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT butlerchris heuristicsandpolicyresponsivenessaresearchagenda AT visbarbara heuristicsandpolicyresponsivenessaresearchagenda |