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"What is political judgement? Why do politicians exhibit such contrasting thought styles in making decisions, even when they agree ideologically? What happens when governments with contrasting thought styles have to deal with each other? In this book Perri 6 presents a fresh, rigorous explanatory theory of judgment, its varieties and its consequences, drawing upon Durkheim and Douglas. He argues that policy makers will understand - and misunderstand - their problems and choices in ways that reproduce their own social organisation. This theory is developed by using the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 as an extended case study, examining the decision-making of the Kennedy, Castro and Khrushchev regimes. Explaining political judgment is the first comprehensive study to show what a neo-Durkheimian institutional approach can offer to political science and to the social sciences generally"--

Existing literature glosses over the often difficult inter-relationship between practical research design and the theoretical underpinnings of methodology. This text addresses such issues head on and helps the reader to better understand each stage of the research process

This theory development article employs neo-Durkheimian institutional theory to present a fresh understanding of policy styles in the policy process. Calls for resilient, robust, agile and improvisatory policymaking are not readily compatible with each other. Each of these styles carries risks and each generates anomalies. Each tends to decay over time. Governments should therefore expect risks of inconsistency and decay in policymaking shaped by these styles. The article argues that these styles, and their risks and tensions, and the trajectories of their decay all arise from the contrasting forms of informal social organisation among policymakers in which they are cultivated. These forms of social organisation give rise to distinct types of bounded rationality, which shape decision-making differently in each ordering.

The notion of opportunism is too often used loosely in policy and administrative research on executive decision-making: its various meanings are too rarely clearly distinguished. To make it useful for explanation, this article presents fresh concept formation work, clarifying the concept to recognize different kinds and degrees of opportunism. To illustrate the use of the refined concept, the article examines key decisions by British cabinets and core executives between 1945 and 1990. It proposes that neo-Durkheimian institutional theory can help to explain why different kinds of opportunism are cultivated in differently ordered administrations, so providing new insight into decision-making. Points for practitioners The article provides a framework through which public managers can identify degrees and types of opportunism among the elected politicians they serve. It will help public managers to identify risks associated with such decisions, when they are asked to execute them.

How do political administrations sustain whatever kinds of cohesion they do, over their time in office? Although recent research emphasizes institutions, sometimes institutions also weaken cohesion. Informal institutions are more important than formal ones in shaping styles of political judgement in governing administrations. But how can institutional processes explain both weakening and strengthening? This article develops a neo‐Durkheimian theory. It proposes that informal institutions should be understood as operating through very particular kinds of practices, which are enacted in a limited number of basic kinds of ritual interaction order. The article innovates by showing how written ritual in government interacts with face‐to‐face ritual in cultivating styles both of thought and of emotions to sustain positive and negative feedback dynamics. The argument is illustrated by analysing negative rites of blame and accusation and positive rites of self‐assertion during positive feedback in the individualistic interaction order in Harold Wilson's 1960s Cabinet.

In understanding styles of political judgement in government decision‐making, explanatory limitations of rational choice, prospect theoretic, historical institutional, groupthink, and other approaches suggest that there is space for developing other frameworks. This article argues that the neo‐Durkheimian institutional theoretical framework deserves serious consideration. It shows that it offers a powerful causally explanatory framework for generating theories of decision‐making in government which can be examined using historical comparative research designs. The value of the concept of a 'thought style' for understanding political judgement is demonstrated, and contrasted sharply with ideology. The theory argues that informal institutions explain thought styles. Well‐known cases from the Cuban missile crisis, and the Wilson and Heath governments illustrate the argument. The article rebuts criticisms offered of the neo‐Durkheimian institutional framework in the literature. Finally, it identifies recent developments and innovations in the approach that make it especially suited to explaining political judgement in government decision‐making.