Political Decision-Making, Social Choice, Public Policy
Last update: 27 May 2026 07:59First version: 13 March 1995 (or before)
- See also:
- Congress
- Decision Theory
- Democracy
- Institutions
- Judgment and Decision-Making
- Networks of Political Actors
- The Role of Experts and Science in Democracy
- Social Science Methodology
- Social Engineering
- Recommended:
- Kenneth Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values [Full text free online]
- David Braybrooke and Charles E. Lindblom, A Strategy of Decision: Policy Evaluation as a Social Process
- Charles E. Lindblom, The Intelligence of Democracy: Decision Making through Mutual Adjustment
- Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom
- Recommended, close-ups:
- Robert Dahl and Charles E. Lindblom, Politics, Economics and Welfare
- Mark A. R. Kleiman, When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment
- Charles E. Lindblom and David K. Cohen Usable Knowledge: Social Science and Social Problem Solving
- Richard R. Nelson, The Moon and the Ghetto: an Essay on Public Policy Analysis
- Jeffrey L. Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky, Implementation: How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland: Or, Why It's Amazing That Federal Programs Work at All, This Being a Saga of the Economic Development Administration as Told by Two Sympathetic Observers Who Seek to Build Morals on a Foundation of Ruined Hopes
- Dani Rodrik, "When Ideas Trump Interests: Preferences, Worldviews, and Policy Innovations", Journal of Economic Perspectives 28 (2014): 189--208
- Suzanne Mettler, The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy
- Modesty forbids me to recommend:
- Henry Farrell and CRS, "AI as Social Technology", Knight First Amendment Institute Occasional Papers 26-5, 11 May 2026
- To read:
- R. Michael Alvarez and John Brehm, Hard Choices, Easy Answers: Values, Information, and American Public Opinion
- R. Douglas Arnold, Congress, the Press, and Political Accountability
- Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones (eds.), Policy Dynamics ["draws on the most extensive data set yet compiled for public policy issues in the United States. Spanning the past half-century, these data make it possible to trace policies and legislation, public and media attention to them, and governmental decisions over time and across institution..."]
- Max Bazerman, Jonathan Baron and Katherine Shonk, You Can't Enlarge the Pie: Six Barriers to Effective Government
- Jonathan Bendor, Sunil Kumar and David Siegel, "V. O. Key Formalized: Retrospective Voting as Adaptive Behavior", American Political Science Review submitted [preprint]
- Yakov Ben-Haim, Information-Gap Decision Theory: Decisions under Severe Uncertainty
- Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, "Homo Economicus and Zoon Politikon: Behavioral Game Theory and Political Behavior", forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis [PDF preprint]
- Valerie Bunce, Subversive Institutions: The Design and the Destruction of Socialism and the State
- John L. Campbell, "Ideas, Politics, and Public Policy," Annual Review of Sociology 2002
- Daniel P. Carpeneter, Reputations, Networks, and Policy Innovation in Executive Agencies, 1862--1928
- Nancy Cartwright and Jeremy Hardie, Evidence-Based Policy: A Practical Guide to Doing It Better [Review in Science]
- David Colander and Roland Kupers, Complexity and the Art of Public Policy: Solving Society's Problems from the Bottom Up
- Matthew A. Crenson and Benjamin Ginsberg, Downsizing Democracy: How America Sidelined Its Citizens and Privatized Its Public
- Michael X. Delli Carpini, What Americans Know About Politics and Why It Matters
- Avinash K. Dixit, The Making of Economic Policy: A Transaction-Cost Politics Perspective
- Amihai Glazer and Lawrence S. Rothenberg, Why Government Succeeds and Why It Fails
- John Gastil, By Popular Demand: Revitalizing Representative Democracy through Deliberative Elections
- Amihai Glazer and Lawrence S. Rothenberg, Why Government Succeeds and Why It Fails
- Rajeev Gowda and Jeffrey Fox (eds.), Judgments, Decisions, and Public Policy
- Bernard E. Harcourt, Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken Windows Policing
- David M. Hart, "'Business' Is Not an Interest Group: On the Study of Companies in American National Politics", Annual Review of Political Science 7 (2004): 47--69
- Susan Herbst, Reading Public Opinion: How Political Actors View the Democratic Process
- Daniel E. Ho, "Does Peer Review Work? An Experiment of Experimentalism", ssrn/2785927
- Vincent L. Hutchings, Public Opinion and Democratic Accountability: How Citizens Learn about Politics
- Lawrence R. Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro, Politicians Don't Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness [A nicely cynical-sounding thesis; I really ought to read this.]
- Bryan D. Jones, Politics and the Architecture of Choice: Bounded Rationality and Governance
- Richard R. Lau and David P. Redlawsk, How Voters Decide
- Lupia and McCubbins, The Democratic Dilemma: Can Citizens Learn What They Really Need to Know?
- Giandomenico Majone, Evidence, Argument, and Persuasion in the Policy Process
- Charles F. Manski, Public Policy in an Uncertain World: Analysis and Decisions [Review in Science]
- Marcus et al., Affective Intelligence and Political Judgment
- Enid Mumford, Dangerous Decisions: Problem-Solving in Tomorrow's World
- Diana C. Mutz, Impersonal Influence: How Perceptions of Mass Collectives Affect Political Attitudes
- Max Neiman, Defending Government: Why Big Government Works
- Samuel Popkin, The Rational Voter
- Mark Schneider and Paul Teske with Michael Mintrom, Public Entrepreneurs: Agents for Change in American Government
- John D. Steinbruner, The Cybernetic Theory of Decision: New Dimensions of Political Analysis
- George Tsebelis, Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work
- Katherine Cramer Walsh, Talking about Politics: Informal Groups and Social Identity in American Life
- Kurt Weyland, Bounded Rationality and Policy Diffusion: Social Sector Reform in Latin America