Suchergebnisse

Individual decision-making is a complex process. If carried out by individual citizens in the context of politically relevant decisions, serious consequences at all levels of a society might occur. That is why these decisions need to be made with care and preferably on a broad set of information to reflect citizens' true preferences. However, due to limited attention, citizens often consider only salient aspects in their decision-making. To mitigate unwanted consequences following therefrom, citizens are in dire need of decision-support. We address this need by developing an Information Systems (IS) tool. Being based on information visualisation, our tool supports citizens by providing instant feedback. To ensure a meaningful engagement, the IS tool is designed according to gamification principles. A first instantiation in the context of renewable energy acceptance in Germany yields three key findings: First, we find indications that young, urban, and environmentally aware citizens are willing to accept a high percentage of renewable wind energy. Second, we find that the tool influences citizens' decision-making. Third, we find citizens to update, however not completely turn over their preferred level of renewable wind energy after interaction with the tool. This holds true across different cross-sections of the population.

In representative democracies, citizens give politicians the authority to decide on the implementation of a variety of policies. Delegation has clear advantages in terms of benefits of specialization. However, delegation may create agency problems between citizens and their politicians. Politicians may exert too little effort, implement inefficient policies, extract rents, or otherwise perform badly. In this thesis, principal-agent problems between citizens and politicians are central to the analysis. The main objective is to explain several institutional arrangements, observed in governments, in the light of the agency problems. The agency problems between voters and politicians are characterized by two essential ingredients. First, politicians are often better informed about the effects of public policies than the electorate. Second, the preferences of politicians are not necessarily aligned with the preferences of the electorate. We examine how the selection of politicians as well as some regulations governing politicians' actions helps to reduce the incidence of policy failures. Each chapter focuses on a different component of the political decision making process. In the first chapter, we consider the interaction between different types of politicians in electoral competition. We show why a political culture may be self-reinforcing. The second chapter shows why there is a strong incentive for a leader in office to replace a critical member of parliament. The third chapter tries to provide an explanation for the observed variety in the composition of committees in U.S. Congress. Finally, the last chapter provides a rationale for the sequential nature of information collection in advocacy systems.

"Politische Begriffe haben oft ein beträchtliches Alter. Sie werden im Laufe der Zeit durch Anpassung an veränderte Verhältnisse abgeschliffen und dadurch undefinierbar, bleiben aber trotzdem auf dem Markt der öffentlichen Meinung. Am Begriff des politischen Entscheidens soll überprüft werden, ob das notwendigerweise so ist. Politisches Entscheiden wird entweder im Schema der unvermeidlichen Willkür und der notwendigen Beschränkung definiert. Dies Schema stammt aus der Diskussion über Souveränität Oder man orientiert sich am allgemeinen Entscheidungsbegriff Entscheiden wird dann als Auswahl unter Alternativen begriffen und das Politische in der Art der Alternativen gesehen. Das läuft auf die Zurechnung auf ein "Subjekt" hinaus. Die Willkür der Auswahl wird durch eine mystische Größe, nämlich durch Mystifikation eines uneinsichtig operierenden Subjekts interpretiert. Beide Versionen geben keinen zureichenden Einblick in die Entscheidungspraxis der Politik. Diese gängigen Versionen lassen sich dadurch ersetzen, daß man Entscheiden als Wiedereinführung von Zeit in die Zeit auffaßt; oder in anderen Worten: als Wiedereinführung eines Unterschieds von Vergangenheit und Zukunft in den gesellschaftlich vorgegebenen Unterschied von Vergangenheit und Zukunft. Dies Wiedereinfuhren geschieht dadurch, daß Ausschnitte der (unabänderlichen) Vergangenheit und Ausschnitte der (unvorhersehbaren) Zukunft als kontingent, als auch anders möglich begriffen werden Dazu muß die Entscheidung thematisch eingeschränkt werden Beispiel: Ladenschlußzeiten, Maastricht II, Rinderseuche. Dann kann man sehen, daß die Vergangenheit, obwohl unabänderlich, die Gegenwart auch anders hätte bestimmen können; und daß die Zukunft, obwohl unbekannt, als Oszillation im Rahmen bestimmter Unterscheidungen begriffen werden kann. Entscheiden in diesem Sinne ist Kontingenzmanagement. Es kommt nicht, oder nur in zweiter Linie, darauf an, wer entscheidet, obwohl jedem Beobachter freigestellt bleibt, sich am Subjekt des Entscheiders zu orientieren." (Autorenreferat)

The RAPID project established, during the first period, a thematic network of risk assessment experts, including relevant partners in the ten countries involved, the "Risk assessor database". The project devoted a specific activity, a single work package, to the dissemination and discussion of the methodology developed during" first two years of the project. National workshops were planned in each country to facilitate integrated knowledge translation activity, using a participatory approach to increase potential knowledge-users awareness on the RAPID project, and to engage them in using the RAPID guidance. Workshops were conceived to present case studies and the RAPID guidance to a targeted audience, to discuss and collect further insights, and integrate different perspectives in the final version of the policy evaluation methodology. However, national workshops also actively contributed to develop evidence based methodological guidance and increase its quality and relevance for potential users by bridging know-do gap between researchers and stakeholders; by involving decision makers and potential users in the knowledge creation process; by facilitating diverse stakeholder participation from governmental, academic and private sectors, carefully identified by national RAPID surveys as having direct expertise in the field of risk assessment. The cultural and administrative differences existing in the countries involved in RAPID guarantee the inclusion of a wide range of perspectives. Results of the national workshops helped to identify barriers and solutions for using the guidance, for adapting necessary changes to it and for communicating results to other potential users. ; .

"Social Media Lessons on the Nature of Political Decision Making" published on by Oxford University Press.

"Dynamic Process Tracing Methods in the Study of Political Decision Making" published on by Oxford University Press.

This article challenges the often-untested assumption that cognitive "heuristics" improve the decision-making abilities of everyday voters. The potential benefits & costs of five common political heuristics are discussed. A new dynamic process-tracing methodology is employed to directly observe the use of these five heuristics by voters in a mock presidential election campaign. We find that cognitive heuristics are at times employed by almost all voters & that they are particularly likely to be used when the choice situation facing voters is complex. A hypothesized interaction between political sophistication & heuristic use on the quality of decision making is obtained across several different experiments, however. As predicted, heuristic use generally increases the probability of a correct vote by political experts but decreases the probability of a correct vote by novices. A situation in which experts can be led astray by heuristic use is also illustrated. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for strategies to increase input from underrepresented groups into the political process. 5 Tables, 4 Figures, 80 References. Adapted from the source document.