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

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.