The Decisionist Imagination: Sovereignty, Social Science and Democracy in the 20th Century

Intro -- The Decisionist Imagination -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of Figures and Tables -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction. Who Decides? -- Chapter 1. Reading the International Mind -- Chapter 2. Militant Democracy as Decisionist Liberalism -- Chapter 3. Parliamentary and Electoral Decisions as Political Acts -- Chapter 4. Decision and Decisionism -- Chapter 5. How Having Reasons Became Making a Decision -- Chapter 6. Computable Rationality, NUTS, and the Nuclear Leviathan -- Chapter 7. The Unlikely Revolutionaries -- Chapter 8. Prediction and Social Choice -- Chapter 9. Predictive Algorithms and Criminal Sentencing -- Conclusion. The Myth of the Decision -- Index

"In the decades following World War II, the science of decision-making moved from the periphery to the center of transatlantic political theory, as part of the broader mobilization of social science during the Cold War. The Decisionist Imagination explores how "decisionism" emerged from its origins in prewar political science to become an object of intense scientific inquiry in the new intellectual and institutional landscape of the postwar era. By bringing together scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, this volume illuminates the connection between early twentieth-century conservative political theory and techno-scientific aspects of modern governance--helping to explain, in short, how we arrived at where we are today"--

"In the decades following World War II, the science of decision-making moved from the periphery to the center of transatlantic political theory, as part of the broader mobilization of social science during the Cold War. The Decisionist Imagination explores how "decisionism" emerged from its origins in prewar political science to become an object of intense scientific inquiry in the new intellectual and institutional landscape of the postwar era. By bringing together scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, this volume illuminates the connection between early twentieth-century conservative political theory and techno-scientific aspects of modern governance--helping to explain, in short, how we arrived at where we are today"--