The Uses of Cognition in Policy Analysis: A First Appraisal

Abstract

Cognitive approaches have become very fashionable in the field of policy analysis. Nevertheless, despite a common label, cognitive policy analyses vary greatly from one author to the next. So, are policy analysts talking about the same thing? Drawing on the dichotomy established by Sperber between soft cognition and hard cognition, we guess that not all authors seek to transfer theoretical assumptions from one scientific discipline to another. In order to demonstrate this hypothesis, we propose to round out these formal categories with additional sub-divisions based on the degree of conceptual transfer from cognitive science to policy analysis.

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