The Civil Service and Policy Formation

In: Canadian journal of economics and political science: the journal of the Canadian Political Science Association = Revue canadienne d'économique et de science politique, Band 23, Heft 4, S. 467-479

Abstract

If we are to live we must act; action necessitates making choices; our choices, in turn, reflect philosophical outlooks and a multitude of competing pressures from the material world. In the politics of democracy choices are continually being made at many levels, under varying conditions, with the expectation that there is sufficient consensus within the community to produce or support decisions regarded by the members as comprehensible and tolerable.In recent years political scientists have been directing their investigations to elections, probably the most conspicuous example of a formal choosing process in which most members of the community are entitled to participate. Resourceful manipulation of the cold figures in which these choices are recorded is now beginning to yield conclusions that can be expressed in qualitative as well as in the more customary quantitative terms. We are learning more and more about why voters make the political choices they do and we can confidently look to the "psephologists," hovering over their wired boards, to give us more illuminating insights into this area of making decisions.