American Government is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of the single-semester American government course. This title includes innovative features designed to enhance student learning, including Insider Perspective features and a Get Connected Module that shows students how they can get engaged in the political process. The book provides an important opportunity for students to learn the core concepts of American government and understand how those concepts apply to their lives and the world around them. American Government includes updated information on the 2016 presidential election.Senior Contributing AuthorsGlen Krutz (Content Lead), University of OklahomaSylvie Waskiewicz, PhD (Lead Editor)

By Max H. Bazerman, Harvard University. Humans are not perfect decision makers. Not only are we not perfect, but we depart from perfection or rationality in systematic and predictable ways. The understanding of these systematic and predictable departures is core to the field of judgment and decision making. By understanding these limitations, we can also identify strategies for making better and more effective decisions.

In order to be effective, leaders need a high tolerance of complexity. Beyond this, they need to inform their people and the outside world of their strategies, policies and decisions. Effective leaders are often inspiring communicators – their own high tolerance of complexity helps them reduce this complexity to a concise and powerful message.

Your sensemaking mindset is therefore of critical importance to motivate others to follow and support you. Your ability to inspire and convince is largely dependent on the way you frame your message, and on your skills at playing the game of framing and reframing. You will learn from a large variety of (video) cases and analyse a large number of situations where leaders’ communication and sensemaking skills are tested and probed. This will ensure that you are equipped to build winning coalitions in your own organization.

This is a course about how research knowledge and other types of knowledge come to be actionable and influential in the world‰ŰÓor not. The course explores ways to make research knowledge more accessible, credible, and useful in the realm of public policy and practice‰ŰÓa project in which the course faculty collectively bring decades of professional experience, in both academic and non-academic roles. The course addresses the politics of the policymaking process, the power of framing and agenda-setting, fads and paradigms in the design professions and society in general, how knowledge diffuses along knowledge and influence networks, and how varied types of knowledge (rational, craft, other) and deliberation shape decision-making and action. The course engages a number of guests to present case studies of research in use (and abuse) in varied fields, highlighting rich areas for potential research contribution, along with major conflicts in public values, political interests, ethical obligations, and more. The resulting dilemmas confront scholars, policymakers, practitioners, and others as they look to research‰ŰÓsometimes‰ŰÓfor useful guidance, influence, or both.

Is a good, solid argument enough to make an impact? How would your data improve the stance that man-made global warming is just an “opinion”? How would you explain your opinion on school tests, budget cuts, crime, immigration, safety and security issues? No doubt that your persuasiveness relies on your arguments. But your ability to influence and convince critically depends on the way you frame your message.

In today’s world, you often need to reduce a complex reality to a concise and convincing message. Framing is an approach that deals with the way we convey our message: our words, images, and metaphors. To take one basic characteristic, a good frame engages the listeners’ values and emotions – it is easy to remember and it is something that people will usually agree with intuitively.

When you enter into a debate, you might be faced with frames of your opponents – and you will have to reframe the debate. This game of framing and reframing makes the debate to look like a chessboard made out of words. Of course, politicians play this game, trying to pull the debate towards their own words and metaphors in order to win their audience. But the game can be found everywhere: in the world of business, science, media – even at home.

We invite you to join our journey of learning the game of framing and reframing. You will discover how this game is played, and how you can play it yourself.

This course suits people who are engaged with and interested in public and political debates. Not only people from the public sector will find it useful, but also engineers, consultants, managers and anyone who wants to make an impact in discussions and debates.

How do we make decisions about the situations we experience every day? In this session, we'll use brain teasers and word problems to highlight some of the mechanisms that drive human thinking — e.g. functional fixedness, heuristics, and framing. The lecture also touches briefly on the role of the brain's frontal lobes in problem solving and emotions.