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Legislators' Cognitive Style of Decision Making: Hedgehogs or Foxes?

Summary/Abstract: This article explores how contemporary legislators make decisions using survey data derived from interviews with members of the Czech Republic’s lower Chamber of Deputies (Poslanecká sněmovna). Extending Tetlock’s (2005) exploration of how American policy experts’ predictions are influenced by the cognitive style they use when making decisions, this article explores for the first time legislators’ cognitive decision making style using an intuitive classification of MPs as either hedgehogs or foxes. How legislators make decisions is generally related to their ideological orientation and policy preferences. There is, however, little previous research addressing the relationship between what MPs think and how they make decisions. The evidence presented in this article reveals that there is a strong link between partisanship and MPs’ ideological orientation. However, there is little association between ideological orientation and method of decision making as different types of decision makers are not systematically distributed across parties. It is likely that the main impact of how legislators make decisions is most evident with party cohesion and discipline – central topics for future research using roll call data.

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