“Decision makers (DMs) often deal with problems that involve multiple, usually conflicting, criteria” (Yoon and Hwang 1995, p.2). From a Multiple Attribute Decision Making (MADM) perspective, these problems shared common characteristics such as having multiple/different attributes with different units of measurement and weights. At a policy formulation stage or, in order words, when “exploring the various options or alternatives available for addressing a problem through policy analysis” (Howlett 2011, p.30), Attribute Ranking Tools (ARTs) attempt to help define/generate the key attributes for each policy/public problem. In this sense, ARTs are procedural instruments as they facilitate the DMs actors involved at the formulation stage in the policy choices process and in structuring decision-making.

Domingos Moreira Cardoso and Jorge Freire de Sousa. (2005). A Multi-Attribute Ranking Solutions Confirmation Procedure. Annals of Operations Research 138 (1): 127-141 pp.

Gwo-Hshiung Tzeng and Jih-Jeng Huang. (2011). Multiple attribute decision-making: methods and applications. Boca Raton, FL : CRC Press

K. Paul Yoon and Hwang, C. (1995). Multiple Attribute Decision Making. SAGE Publications, Inc. doi: 10.4135/9781412985161

Michael Howlett (2011). Designing public policies: principles and instruments. New York: Routledge

Fields interested in studying public policy, such as political science and political sociology, have traditionally been concerned with studying policy ‘inputs’ or the dynamics of public policy formation. For example, in political science a key focus has been upon the role played by public opinion, political party activities, elections and similar phenomena in affecting policy-making processes and defining policy content, while, in the case of political sociology, a key focus has been on understanding the roles played by social structure in defining actor ‘interests’ and positions in policy-making processes (Mayntz 1983).
Studies in these disciplines revealed a great deal about policy formation but tended to neglect the implementation component of policy-making. Studies in other fields such as public administration and management and organization studies, on the other hand, following the admonitions of early students of the field such as the US president and political scientist Woodrow Wilson (1887) traditionally focused their efforts on the study of the inner workings of government – especially upon the study of behavioural and management issues involved in such tasks as financial administration and budgeting, ministerial responsibility and accountability, the operation of the merit principle and human resources/personnel administration – and purposely avoided considering the more political aspects of policy processes.
In his pathbreaking early works on public policy-making, Harold Lasswell drew on both these literatures not only to define public policy, clarify important aspects of policy-making such as the number and type of stages involved in policy deliberations, and emphasize the importance of context to its workings (Torgerson 1985 and 1990), but also to think about the main instruments of policy-making. Lasswell (1954) noted the extent to which governments could affect policy-making through manipulations involving, among other things, [...]

Scholarly attention in the early 1980s was focused on the need to more precisely categorize types of policy instruments in order to better analyze the reasons for their use (Salamon 1981; Tupper and Doern 1981; Trebilcock and Hartle 1982; Bressers and Honigh 1986; Bressers and Klok 1988). Careful examination and systematic classification of implementation instruments and instrument choices, it was argued, would not only lead to insights into the factors driving the policy process and the characterization of long-term patterns of public policy-making, as Lasswell had hoped, but would also allow practitioners to more readily draw lessons from the experiences of others with the use of particular techniques in specific circumstances and hence improve policy designs and outcomes (Mayntz 1983; Linder and Peters 1984; Woodside 1986).
During this period studies in Europe and North America shed a great deal of light on the construction and establishment of regulatory and other political and administrative agencies and enterprises; traditional financial inducements, and the ‘command-and-control’ measures adopted by administrative agencies, during this period (Tupper and Doern 1981; Hood 1986; Howlett 1991; Vedung 1997; Landry et al. 1998). And this new emphasis upon the systematic study of policy instruments quickly generated a sizable academic literature and resulted in immediate application in the design of many new policy initiatives in emerging areas such as pollution prevention and professional regulation (Trebilcock 1983; Hippes 1988). Significant subjects such as the reasons behind shifts in patterns of instrument choices associated with the waves of privatization and deregulation which characterized the period also received attention in this period (Howlett and Ramesh 1993).
Soon the field of instrument studies had advanced enough that Salamon (1989) could argue that the ‘tools approach’ had become a [...]

Decision making involves the selection of a course of action from a range of policy options including that of maintaining status quo. Decision-making is sometimes incorrectly considered to be synonymous with the entire policymaking process rather than being a stage in the process. It is also distinguishable from other stages in features of specific tasks and the limited number of key players involved (Xun et al, 2010).  Depending on the task and context, policy practitioners deploy a variety of strategies to solve decision problems. Often these strategies are heuristic that may overlook information pertinent to the policy problem, leading to decision errors. Payne discusses that strategy selection can sometimes be seen as a tradeoff between making the most accurate decision versus the level of ‘cognitive effort’ spent. One commonly used tool is Decision-matrix.