Nobody can pay attention to everything, especially policy-makers and politicians. There is simply too much going on at any given second of the day. Some things that loom large are forgotten tomorrow. Today’s trivia becomes tomorrow’s crisis. So, we use short-cuts (‘heuristics’) to decide what matters, what can be safely ignored. Important for understanding all policy-makers’ (in)actions, and those of other (e.g. corporate) actors.
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See also Punctuated Equilibrium
See also the Garbage Can model
See also Primeval Soup
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