 Kurt Weyland, The Diffusion of Innovations: How Cognitive Heuristics Shaped Bolivia¡¯s Pension Reform What causal factors drive the diffusion of policy innovations across countries? Bolivia¡¯s decision to adopt the Chilean model of pension privatization was not imposed by powerful external forces; even in a poor, aid-dependent country, domestic decision makers had considerable latitude. Policymaking was also not driven by the symbolic quest for international legitimacy, but rather by the pragmatic goal to resolve clear, widely recognized problems. Most important, problem solving did not comply with ideal-typical standards of comprehensive rationality; instead, policymakers relied on cognitive shortcuts, especially the heuristics of availability, representativeness, and anchoring, that facilitate decision making but risk distortions and biases in judgment. |