THE EFFECT OF DYNAMIC AND STATIC CHOICE SETS ON POLITICAL DECISION-MAKING - AN ANALYSIS USING THE DECISION BOARD PLATFORM

Previous studies of political decision making have used only ''static' ' choice sets, where alternatives are ''fixed'' and are a priori known to the decision maker. We assess the affect of a dynamic choice set ( new alternatives appear during the decision process) on strategy selec tion and choice in international politics. We suggest that decision ma kers use a mixture of decision strategies when making decisions in a t rue-stage process consisting of an initial screening of available alte rnatives, and a selection of the best one from the subset of remaining alternatives. To test the effects of dynamic and static choice sets o n the decision process we introduce a computer-based ''process tracer' ' in a study of top-ranking officers in the U.S. Air Force. The result s show that (1) national security decision makers use a mixture of str ategies in arriving at a decision, and (2) strategy selection and choi ce are significantly influenced by the structure of the choice set (st atic versus dynamic).