HISTORICAL ANALOGIES AND THE COGNITIVE DIMENSION OF DOMESTIC POLICY-MAKING

Established models of the domestic policy making process accord some r ole to the individual decision-maker, but they usually fail to show ho w policy decisions are ultimately influenced by the character of the i nformation available to the policymakers concerned. Drawing on one pro minent model of decision-making developed by analysts of foreign polic y-the analogical reasoning approach-this article proposes that individ ual-level approaches are most useful in domestic policy analysis where decision-makers must confront a discrete policy ''episode'' in which perceived levels of cognitive uncertainty and ambiguity are high. An a nalysis of decision-making by political leaders during the 1967 Detroi t riots reveals that these leaders made widespread use of historical a nalogies at various stages of the policymaking process, Policymakers c an probably be expected to rely on analogizing under circumstances and contexts that make cognitive demands similar to those observed in the Detroit case.