From Belief to Behaviour. Using Cognitive Maps to Test Ideational Policy Explanations

Progress in answering the question of to what extent ideas influence policy has been slow. One of the reasons is the weakness in deploying methods to study beliefs in a structured comparative fashion. We address this issue by introducing the method of cognitive mapping (CM). CM allows scholars to determine what policy-goals and instruments are deemed most important by actors in a structured and rigorous manner. We draw on a cognitive map of the Dutch Prime Minister Rutte representing his beliefs regarding the Eurozone crisis and show how CM can be used to derive expectations about his policy-preferences. Next, we perform a plausibility probe by comparing these expectations to Rutte’s policy behaviour during the crisis and find that they correspond very well to his policy behaviour.