Decisions, Decisions: A Look at Government Decision-Making in Response to the Threat of Terrorism

In this paper, an exploration of how governments make decisions is presented. The policy decisions surrounding four separate terrorist incidents in Spain and Great Britain are analyzed using prospect theory, and other concepts from game theory in order to demonstrate the decision making process of policy makers. The aim of this study is to demonstrate how the decisions of governments are influenced by their own specific histories and policies that were used in the past. It is shown that governmental decision making is influenced by previous experiences with terrorism, and that governments learn from previous mistakes