Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 13:46:00 +0100
From: Bruce Edmonds <b.edmonds@mmu.ac.uk>
To: jom-emit-ann@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: JoM-EMIT New paper: Survival of the institutionally fittest concepts by Martin de Jong
Survival of the institutionally fittest concepts
by
Martin de Jong
Abstract
Certain arguments generated by political and administrative
actors find their way to tangible policy actions, others do not.
Some information is embraced by actors in institutional
systems, whereas other arguments and facts can be ignored
with impunity. Apparently, institutional structures constitute a
persistent tendency to favour particular arguments at the cost
of others. In decision making processes, i.e. processes during
which a selection is to be made among various alternative
policy options, institutional structures, consisting of existing
decision rules and practices, operate as an information filter
creating a conceptual bias.
This article spots the issue of political decision making from
an evolutionary and memetics perspective, employing terms
such as variation and selection, mutation and replication,
information transmission and fit concepts. With the aid of the
evolutionary theoretical framework, the mechanism that
decides why and when certain concepts are deemed fruitful
and others die is pinpointed. Examples from the field of
investments in transport infrastructure in England are used to
clarify the line of thought. At the end, the evolutionary
perspective derived from biology is compared to well-known
authors in political science to see if complementary ground
can be found.
Available at URL:
http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit/1999/vol3/de_jong_m.html