Understanding Collective Decision Making: A Fitness Landscape Model Approach

Collective decision making seems a straightforward matter: people come together and decide. But why is it that today's winners can turn into tomorrow's losers? Why can't you always get what you want? How does the interaction between the decision makers influence the outcome? And are opportunists better off than stubborn decision makers? This book takes a refreshing look at collective decision making by using models of evolutionary biology and naturalistic decision making to analyse real-world cases. These cases include the rise and fall of the Dutch high-speed railway project and the unexpected effects of introducing public-private partnerships to connect the new Thai national airport to Bangkok. Gerrits and Marks successfully guide the reader towards an in-depth understanding through rich empirical research and uncover the beautiful complexity of collective decision making. Understanding Collective Decision Making will be of great interest to academics working in public administration, political science and evolutionary theory. Public managers will also find this book helpful to understand why and how collective decisions are formed.

Table of Contents:
Contents: 1. An uphill struggle 2. Models of social evolution: fitness landscapes 3. The transformation of fitness landscapes 4. The model 5. Memory of a dream: High-speed rail in the Netherlands 6. Enter in time: Analysing dynamics in three empirical studies 7. Evolution in collective decision making Index

About the Author :
Lasse Gerrits, Professor Governance of Complex Urban Transformations, Academic Director, Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Peter Marks, Department of Public Administration, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Review :
‘In Understanding Collective Decision Making, Lasse Gerrits and Peter Marks provide a powerful analytical framework to help one examine and interpret processes of collective decision-making, with a particular focus on urban transformations.’ ‘This is a remarkable book that deserves in-depth scrutiny and critique.’ ‘Brilliant! Grounded in the concept of fitness landscapes - as well as the latest advances in case-based modeling and critical realism, and also visual and social complexity - this book is a significant breakthrough in the study of collective decision making, particularly as it unfolds across conceptual time/space. To do so, Gerrits and Marks appeal to the readers’ intuition, helping them navigate two fictional worlds (clock and cloud) to arrive at four different real-world empirical examples, which are wonderfully illustrated. There is also a web-based software package (un-code.org), which the authors developed and which readers can now use to employ these new tools. An absolute must-read!’ ‘For a while, complexity theory holds the promise of a new paradigm for the planning sciences. This book is a major step forward in that endeavour. It provides a unique blend of analytical reasoning and in-depth case studies within an original and coherent framework.’