WHY DO ALL POLITICAL
LEADERS MAKE BAD
DECISIONS?
WHY DO SOME TYPES OF
POLITICAL LEADERS MAKE
REALLY BAD DECISIONS?
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY A “IRRATIONAL”
POLITICAL DECISION?
What makes a decision rational?
• For social scientists, rational doesn’t mean normatively
good (i.e., for the people who are being governed)
• Nor does effective decision-making mean rational
• Nor is a rational decision necessarily one that is consistent
with outside or universal ideas about what the best
choices are
– Example: What would be a rational decision for a brutal
dictator facing an uprising in Egypt or Syria today?
• Rational decisions are choices that will constitute the
most effective way to maximize a leader’s desired ends.
• How prevalent is the “rationality” assumption in the
social sciences and business? “Rational choice” is the
dominant assumption.
•
•
•
•
•
WHAT MAKES A LEADER’S DECISION-MAKING RATIONAL?
WHY USING THE “EXPECTED UTILITY CALCULATION,” OF
COURSE
Leaders need to know and consider carefully what their goals are, and
those objectives need to be consistent with their real preferences
If they have competing or conflicting goals, rational leaders should
rank their preferences
Rational decision-making weighs all viable options, their potential
consequences
Rational decision making involves careful and systematic thoughts
about the probability of that each option will result in certain costs
and benefits.
– Example: You are reasonably happy with your current job, but are
wondering if you should move on. If you quit your current job,
there is a 95% chance of finding another job; a 85 % chance you will
like it as much, a 90% chance your spouse will find a job s/he likes,
a 90% chance the schools will be as good for your children, a 90%
chance you will make more money. Should you quit you job? … The
joint probability of these various events is less than 60%.
Rational decision-making means learning over time and recalculating
IS IT PERFECTLY RATIONAL TO BE
IRRATIONAL? OFTEN IT IS!
• Bounded rationality includes saticficing: a decision-making strategy
that attempts to meet criteria for adequacy, rather than to identify
an optimal solution.
• It is perfectly rational to operate with less than full information
when:
– When substitutes (aka “heuristic shortcuts”) for more
information get you close to what you need with low cost (e.g.
partisanship, historical analogy)
– When the stakes are low
– When getting more info has high costs
• What should we do if the stakes are high and we have to operate
with less than full information? Acting against the worst case
scenario assumptions may be fully rational even when you are
poorly informed. Examples: invading Iraq over WMDs or leaving
Afghanistan quickly
WHERE IN MAKING DECISIONS DO
ALMOST ALL LEADERS GO WRONG?
• Two major types of biases: Cognitive (mental short-cuts that go wrong) and
motivational (decisions based on a psychological need, fear, desire)
• Premature cognitive closure: Why do we usually go with the first decision
that looks like it will work?
• Why is group-think so common? Why is it especially likely if a leader has
proposed premature cognitive closure? Why are non-democracies
especially prone to it?
• The endowment principle: Why do we retrospectively imagine that close
decisions were in fact obvious ones? (Do you want a coffee cup or a pen?
Why did you pick the best school for yourself?)
• Why do we follow operational code and have so many issues with
problem misclassification and the misspecification of options (what
happens if things go wrong when a decision-maker was “thinking outside
of the box”?)
• Misreading the past when it comes to probability in the future: If you flip
three heads in a row, what is the probability that the next coin toss will be
heads?
WHERE DO ALMOST ALL LEADERS
GO WRONG?
• Cognitive dissonance and the perseverance of beliefs in the face of new facts.
Why do we keep believing things that we would know were wrong if we just
stopped evaluate new evidence carefully?
• The fundamental attribution theorem. Why do we see decisions by our
adversaries make as linked to their flawed character rather than being caused
by situational factors (our use and ownership of WMDs as example vs. why
Iran wants them).
• Why do we tend to overestimate our own ability?
• Why are we so open to the selective use of evidence and postivist reasoning?
Why do we spend more time trying to prove our points and justify our
decisions than trying to disprove them?
• Why are we risk adverse with respect to potential gains, but risk avoidant
when potential losses are involved (investing as an example)
• Why do we typically go with the status quo when we are unsure… even
though the status quo may actually be the worst option? Example: Strict
interpretation of the Constitution?
• Why do we engage in future cost discounting, especially when a problem or
threat will slowly? Why do ignore things like the fact that eating poorly will
kills us, global warming, the national debt, and the collapse of American
hegemony?
PERSONALITY DISORDERS AND
LEADERSHIP
• Jerrold Post: The term personality “connotes a systematic pattern
of functioning that is consistent over a range of behaviors and
over time. In the political personality profile, we attempt to
characterize the core political personality, identifying the deeply
ingrained patterns that are coherent and accordingly have
powerful predictive implications.”
• Just a reminder on some key areas of the political personality
profile:
– What are the primary things that motivate a given leader? Why does s/he
want power? What purpose does she see from the exercise of power?
– How does the leader’s mind work (Cognative style)? How well does s/he
process information? How open is s/he to persuasion and new
information? Does the leader calculate and react to risk well?
– What are the leader’s core beliefs and values? Is the world divided into
good and evil?
– What are the key traits? Does s/he have a disorder
NARCISSISTS IN POWER
What is narcissism?
• It is a common major disorder among political leaders because it fits with popular
images of an appropriate leader-follower relationship in many democratic and
non-democratic settings
• Narcissists have a grandiose sense of self-importance, uniqueness, and
achievement (the latter of which is usually overstated)
• They are motivated by the constant need for attention and especially admiration;
they never satisfied with the status quo
• They lack empathy, blame those around them for failures, are ruthless to foes,
expect special treatment, and adhere only to internal and malleable scruples
Why are these leaders dangerous?
• Cognition problems: Group think and pools of narcissists, the endowment
principle magnified, attribution errors, they inability to deal with mistakes, willing
to accept short term gains that look good, but that are bad over the long haul
(esp. if credit can be taken, but blame will be distributed)
Are there times when having this kind of a leader is good?
• State building periods: These folks keep going, they take risks, and they will do
anything for the glory of creating a new state
OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVES IN POWER
How do OC’s lead?
• Democracies frequently select these types of leaders
• They are Vulcans: Nuanced to a fault. They tend to see everything in shades of grey,
and they tend to rely on procedures and rules to provide order around them
• They emphasize process over results in decision-making and insist on acquiring more
information when they should act even
• They focus on data and what can be concretely known even when this kind of
information is not available or necessarily accurate; they do not trust their intuition
or emotions
• They will typically be overwhelmed by complex issues and then can end up letting
poor readings of data take lead them astray.
• Once they have committed to a decision or process, they tend to stick to that decision
no matter where it takes them.
What’s wrong with these leaders?
• They can let small crises become serious ones by inaction and the inability to read
threats for what they are.
• They procrastinate to a fault and others take advantage of this.
• They tend to strongly favor incremental responses and compromise even when these
strategies make no sense.