Decisionist Imagination

Daniel Bessner is Associate Professor of International Studies in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington.

“The Decisionist Imagination is more an effort to rethink specific aspects of an existing literature and will find a keen readership amongst those who know it.” • Journal of Contemporary History “The Decisionist Imagination expertly outlines the development of a key component of social scientific thought, placing it into historical context across the whole of the twentieth century, providing a systematic analysis and evaluation of a core concept present in virtually all academic fields.” • Inderjeet Parmar, City University of London

• List of Figures and TablesAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Who Decides?Daniel Bessner and Nicolas GuilhotChapter 1. Reading the International Mind: International Public Opinion in Early Twentieth Century Anglo-American ThoughtStephen WertheimChapter 2. Militant Democracy as Decisionist Liberalism: Reason and Power in the Work of Karl LoewensteinCarlo Invernizzi-Accetti and Ian ZuckermanChapter 3. Parliamentary and Electoral Decisions as Political ActsKari PalonenChapter 4. Decision and DecisionismNomi Claire LazarChapter 5. How Having Reasons Became Making a Decision: The Cold War Rise of Decision Theory and the Invention of Rational ChoicePhilip MirowskiChapter 6. Computable Rationality, NUTS, and the Nuclear LeviathanS.M. AmadaeChapter 7. The Unlikely Revolutionaries: Decision Sciences in the Soviet GovernmentEglė RindzevičiūtėChapter 8. Prediction and Social Choice: Daniel Bell and Future ResearchJenny AnderssonChapter 9. Predictive Algorithms and Criminal SentencingAngèle ChristinConclusion: The Myth of the DecisionIndex