Policy‐Specific Information and Informal Agenda Power

Hirsch, Alexander V.; Shotts, Kenneth W.

doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00538.x

Cited by 42 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…A key assumption of our model is that any quality developed to improve a policy proposal is specific to that proposal (see also Londregan 2000;Ting 2011;Hirsch and Shotts 2012). This assumption contrasts with models of endogenous acquisition of general expertise, in which an expert worries that a decision maker will expropriate her investments to achieve different policy goals (e.g., Gilligan and Krehbiel 1989).…”

Section: We Present a Model Of Policy Development In Which Competing mentioning

confidence: 77%

“…This is assumed to be (0, 0) , capturing the idea that the decision maker lacks policy-development capacity, and so will simply select a poorly designed policy that reflects his ideological preferences. The decision maker also cannot transfer quality generated for one policy to another policy; in the terminology of Hirsch and Shotts (2012) it is policy-specific. For example, if an entrepreneur invests time and effort to develop an effective and equitable school voucher program, the decision maker cannot expropriate those investments to develop an alternative policy that improves the quality of public schools.…”

Section: The Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Competitive Policy Development

Hirsch

Shotts²

2015

American Economic Review

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During the early years of the New Deal, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt faced an enormous challenge. He believed that dramatic policy innovation was urgently needed on a wide range of issues, including agriculture, trade, banking, employment, and social insurance. However, although Roosevelt was well versed in policy, crafting workable proposals for such a far-reaching agenda was well beyond his capacity, or that of his immediate advisors. Instead, the president had to rely on a broader array of politicians and bureaucrats to develop new policies. Although these individuals shared some common goals (e.g., ending the Great Depression), they also had deep-seated ideological disagreements among themselves, and with the president, about what policies the federal government should pursue.Classic and contemporary theories of bureaucratic politics would suggest that this situation was ripe for exploitation and inefficiency. Weber (1991) famously argued that the typical ruler of a modern state is reduced to being a "mere dilettante" when dealing with institutionalized bureaucratic actors. More recently, scholars building on the work of Crawford and Sobel (1982) have argued that policymaking

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Section: We Present a Model Of Policy Development In Which Competing mentioning

confidence: 77%

Section: The Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Competitive Policy Development

Hirsch

Shotts²

2015

American Economic Review

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“…This assumption makes sense only when the relationship between policy and outcomes is sufficiently simple. Hirsch andShotts 2012, 69-70. 62.…”

Section: Experience As a Monitoring Devicementioning

confidence: 99%

No Substitute for Experience: Presidents, Advisers, and Information in Group Decision Making

Saunders

2017

Int Org

101

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Despite advances in the study of individuals in international relations, we still know little about how the traits and biases of individuals aggregate. Most foreign policy decisions are made in groups, usually by elites with varying degrees of experience, which can have both positive and negative psychological effects. This paper addresses the aggregation problem by exploring how the balance of foreign policy experience among leaders and advisers affects decision making in war, using a principalagent framework that allows the relative experience of leaders and advisers to vary. A leader's experience affects decision making and, ultimately, the risks associated with conflict, through three mechanisms. First, experience influences a leader's ability to monitor advisers. Second, a leader's experience affects the credibility of delegation to experienced advisers and, in turn, the nature and extent of information gathering. Third, experience affects whether leaders are able to diversify advice, as well as their preference for policies that appear certain. I illustrate the argument using two cases that hold an unusual number of factors constant: the 1991 and 2003 Iraq Wars. George W. Bush's inexperience exacerbated the biases of his advisers, whereas his father's experience cast a long shadow over many of the same officials. Understanding the experience and biases of any one individual is insufficient-the balance of experience within a group is also important. Experience is therefore not fungible: a seasoned team cannot substitute for an experienced leader.Political psychology is enjoying a renaissance in international relations, as the papers in this special issue show. The introductory and concluding essays, however, raise a long-standing criticism: that psychological approaches identify a list of biases without specifying when and how these biases matter. Part of the problem is the unit of analysis. Studies of individual preferences and beliefs rarely address how biases aggregate, but foreign policy decision making often happens in For helpful comments and advice, I thank the editors of the special issue, particularly David Lake, and participants at the UCSD workshops on the Behavioral Revolution in International Relations. I am also grateful for thoughtful comments and suggestions from

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“…Institutions, therefore, are posed as mechanisms for extracting the maximum amount of information from the expert. As Hirsch and Shotts (2012) noted, "uncertainty reduction, expertise, and the common good have become essentially synonymous, regardless of whether the empirical domain is institutional design, lobbying, or delegation. "…”

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confidence: 99%

Expert advice to a voting body

Schnakenberg

2015

Journal of Economic Theory

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I provide a theory of information transmission in collective choice settings. In the model, an expert has private information on the effect of a policy proposal and communicates to a set of voters prior to a vote over whether or not to implement the proposal. In contrast to previous game-theoretic models of political communication, the results apply to situations involving multiple voters, multidimensional policy spaces and a broad class of voting rules. The results highlight how experts can use information to manipulate collective choices in a way that reduces the ex ante expected utilities of all voters. Opportunities for expert manipulation are the result of collective choice instability: all voting rules that allow collective preference cycles also allow welfare-reducing manipulative persuasion by an expert. The results challenge prevailing theories of institutions in which procedures are designed to maximize information transmission.

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Policy‐Specific Information and Informal Agenda Power

Cited by 42 publications

References 24 publications

Competitive Policy Development

Competitive Policy Development

No Substitute for Experience: Presidents, Advisers, and Information in Group Decision Making

Expert advice to a voting body

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