ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the history of decision making might well encompass thousands of years of human history and a dizzying array of approaches to the challenges of uncertainty and ambiguity. It provides an overview of portions of a vast body of practice and scholarship. The chapter offers a rationale for focus and selection; and discusses a framework for organizing the analysis of decision making problems, and research. The separation of powers formed the basic decision making institutions in the US Constitution. J. L. Hill points out that tyranny becomes less likely as other representative institutions compete, creating religious freedom and valued diversity, a wider distribution of property, freedom of speech and of the press, as well as trial by jury. The impact of representativeness on public administration was a step in another direction from ruling elite. Andrew Jacksonian democracy and the reform era lies an era of institutional development ignored by public administration.
