Date of Award

Summer 2019

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

School of Public Service

Program/Concentration

Public Administration and Policy

Committee Director

Berhanu Mengistu

Committee Member

Katrina Miller-Stevens

Committee Member

Joshua Steinfield

Committee Member

Gail Nicula

Abstract

The field of Public Policy and Administration is heavily influenced by the decisions individuals make regarding matters of governance. These types of decisions can affect a broad scope of government-related activities ranging from esoteric debates about political ideology to policy development to specific ways in which people directly interact with public services. Unfortunately, in the view of this research, there is no sufficient model for conceptualizing governance decision making. This creates the focus of inquiry for this work, which is to examine how governance decisions are conceived of and formulated. The purpose of this research is then to analyze the governance decision making processes. This is achieved by examining the available research on decision making processes and then contrasting the widely applied rational approaches with the more applicable nonrational approaches for decision making. This review will indicate that a nonrational conceptualization based on schemas, heuristics, and a societal-level shared mental model may be more instrumental in analyzing governance decisions than rational conceptualizations. The unique but necessary methodological approach of abductive logic is used to develop a theoretical foundation for this new perspective. An application of abductive principles is used to create a framework that anchors governance decisions. The result of these efforts is a model that can serve as a tool for analysis of these important and influential decisions in governance.

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In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/xvpq-e948

ISBN

9781687924834

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