In the decades following World War II, the science of decision-making moved from the periphery to the center of transatlantic thought. The Decisionist Imagination explores how "decisionism" emerged from its origins in prewar political theory to become an object of intense social scientific inquiry in the new intellectual and institutional landscapes of the postwar era. By bringing together scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, this volume illuminates how theories of decision shaped numerous techno-scientific aspects of modern governance-helping to explain, in short, how we arrived at where we are today.

This is the first volume to explore decisionism beyond the thought of Carl Schmitt. This is the first volume to trace how decisionism impacted the social sciences in the trans-Atlantic context of the United States and Europe. This is the first volume to explore decisionism from an interdisciplinary perspective.

"The Decisionist Imagination is more an effort to rethink specific aspects of an existing literature and will find a keen readership amongst those who know it." ? Journal of Contemporary History

"The Decisionist Imagination expertly outlines the development of a key component of social scientific thought, placing it into historical context across the whole of the twentieth century, providing a systematic analysis and evaluation of a core concept present in virtually all academic fields." ? Inderjeet Parmar, City University of London