Methods for analyzing decision-making: a framework approach

Abstract

In political science an eternal question concerns how decisions and policies arise. Modern society, characterized by more uncertainty and complexity than before, increases the challenge of providing valid answers. However, the general lack of methodological concern in several previous studies in this area stresses the need for elaborations of more suitable approaches. In this article we add a methodological perspective that deals with this very question. By reviewing and analyzing earlier research on how decision-making is reached, the overall ambition of this article is to create a framework that can lay the methodological foundation for further studies. Such a framework, which takes into account both the complexity of modern multi-governance societies and adds methodological perspectives of macro and micro standpoints as well as of causal mechanisms, can be used in future research to achieve richer pictures of how decision-making is carried out. In addition, we show how a certain technique of analysis is highly compatible to this framework and that jointly these features provide solutions for a better understanding of the complexity of modern decision-making. All in all, applying this strategy can be used to better systematize complex causal chains that reflect different analytical levels and thereby increase leverage on how to understand and explain the process of political decisions.

Leveraging windows of opportunity for expertise to matter in global environmental governance: insights from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification

“…Lastly, we want to reiterate that institutional design and boundary work are just two broad categories out of several contextual factors that contribute to the influence of expertise in global environmental governance (Brachthäuser, 2011;Little, 2012;Nyhlén and Lidén, 2014;UNEP, 2021). Scholars claim that third party interests, catalyzing events, changes in political regimes, the scale of the environmental problem, among other factors external to global environmental political institutions where expertise is situated, can induce changes in decision-making (Soomai, 2017;Spence, 2017;Wall et al, 2017;Dunn et al, 2018;Matsumoto et al, 2020;Kieslich and Salles, 2021;Wagner et al, 2023).…”