Abstract Some policies fail to achieve their goals and some succeed. More often than not, it is unclear whether a policy has been a success or a failure, sometimes because the goal was not clear, or because there were a multitude of goals. In this introduction to this special issue we discuss what we mean by policy success and failure, and assume that policy success or failure is ultimately the result of the decision-making process: policy success results from good policies, which tend to come from good decisions, which are in turn the result of a good decision-making process. We then set out a framework for understanding the conditions under which good and bad decisions are made. Built upon factors highlighted in a broad literature, we argue that a potential interaction of institutions, interests and ideology creates incentives for certain outcomes, and leads to certain information being gathered or prioritised when it is being processed. This can bias decision-makers to choose a certain course of action that may be suboptimal, or in other cases there is an absence of bias, creating the possibility for making successful policy choices.

中文翻译：

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政策成功/政策失败：理解政策选择的框架

摘要 有些政策未能实现其目标，有些则成功了。通常情况下，政策是成功还是失败并不清楚，有时是因为目标不明确，或者因为目标众多。在本期特刊的介绍中，我们讨论了政策成功和失败的含义，并假设政策的成功或失败最终是决策过程的结果：政策成功源于良好的政策，而良好的政策往往来自良好的决策，这反过来又是良好决策过程的结果。然后，我们制定了一个框架来理解做出好的和坏的决定的条件。基于广泛文献中强调的因素，我们认为机构之间的潜在相互作用，利益和意识形态对某些结果产生激励，并导致某些信息在处理时被收集或优先处理。这可能会使决策者偏向于选择可能不理想的某个行动方案，或者在其他情况下没有偏向，从而为做出成功的政策选择创造了可能性。