What Gets Attention in Public Decision-Making?
Insight session by Amandine Lerusse
National and local politicians, as well as public managers at all levels of government, have access to an unprecedented amount of evidence and information to help address pressing societal challenges, from sustainability and artificial intelligence to growing social inequalities. Yet their ability to make use of this information is constrained by limited time, resources, and cognitive capacity. They cannot attend to every problem, piece of evidence, or potential solution. Instead, they must selectively allocate their attention across competing demands.
In this presentation, I examine which characteristics of evidence attract and sustain politicians’ and public managers’ attention, and when this attention translates into policy prioritization. More broadly, I seek to understand the link between evidence, attention, and policy priorities: why some evidence cuts through competing demands for attention, and under what conditions it ultimately shapes which problems and solutions rise to the top of the policy agenda.
Each Insight Session comprises two individual presentations by two different speakers. In this session, Rebecca Schaefer and Amandine Lerusse will share their insights on two different topics.