Framework Effectiveness and Prevalence in Public Policy : A survey of the field and a discussion of the need for an agent based systems approach

Policymakers have an important role in the comprehension and creation of adequate political agendas that meet the needs of their constituency. Regardless of their specific field, all policymakers face decision making challenges each day. This paper seeks to understand and address how individuals in the policy field view the policy making process and what frameworks they use to help them make decisions. A PRISMA literature review and survey of policy professionals was conducted to determine what frameworks policy makers use (if any), why, and whether they perceived them as effective. Results of the study reveal that framework use increases with education level and that SWOT and CBA (cost-benefit analysis) are chief among the frameworks used although they fall short of capturing the complexities of the types of systems in which policy makers intervene.The discussion offers the Agent Based Approach (ABA) as a possible solution to the opaque and non- comprehensive nature of mainstream policy frameworks such as SWOT, CBA, and others. Our discussion showcases the universality of the ABA approach, and sets it apart from other approaches that fail to account for complex adaptive systems (CAS).