Abstract
In Political Science the term ‘black box’ has been coined by David Easton. He conceives of the political decision-making process, ‘that system of interactions [...] through which [...] authoritative allocations are made and implemented’ (Easton 1965a, p. 50), as a conversion mechanism wherein political inputs (demand and sup- port) are transformed into outputs (policy).1 The inner workings of this mechanism are not visible. As a result, one does not know by which precise rules it operates other than by systematically comparing variation in input with variation in output.
The method of Political Science is the interpretation of life; its instrument is insight, a nice understanding of subtle, unformulated conditions.
Woodrow Wilson
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© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Veen, T. (2011). Analysing Collective Decision-Making in the Council: A Research Design. In: The Political Economy of Collective Decision-Making. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20174-5_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20174-5_2
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