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promises, to give reasons for their beliefs and actions, and to accede to the better arguments and more justifiable claims of others.”64 Dialogue forms a basis of social cooperation, and people feel committed to the agreements researched in such a context.65 Interactive dialogue therefore acts as a social process that helps to create shared mental models, has a unifying effect, and helps to develop credible commitment for the execution phase.66 However, such routines appear to be rare in public discourse.The previous section on the role of roles suggests that the ability to foster problem-solving dialogue is reduced when multiple actors from different institutional settings are engaged because such a diversity of views reduces the ability to foster consensus. All else being equal, dialogue routines that are less institutionally diverse are more likely to feature the use of performance information to solve problems. For this reason, traditional budget routines have a limited ability to create dialogue that will generate solutions. Agency staff or stakeholders presenting information to the central budget office or testifying before the legislature have good reason to act defensively and will rarely address operational questions. In such situations, the trademark of interactive dialogue will be advocacy. Information will be used strategically by advocates who are fully aware that they argue in a decision environment that does not closely resemble a strict performance budgeting process. Decision makers who receive budget information from agencies lack the time, interest , and capacity to make decisions on resource allocation based on performance information. The budget cycle is too short, and budgeteers have enough to do to make budget decisions incrementally. It is nearly impossible for them to make judgments on what mounds of performance information indicate for a particular functional area. This is true even if only a handful of performance measures is reported. There will never be enough information to substitute for the expertise and knowledge to enable substantive judgments to be made, and there will always be too much information for human cognitive processes to deal with. Of course, advocates are biased in their assessments, but all parties are aware of this, and it does not mean that they are wrong. In fact, the greater the degree to which they can use performance data to support their position, the less biased and more rational they appear. The Interactive Dialogue Model and Decision Making What does the interactive dialogue model tell us about decision processes and outcomes ? In cross-institutional settings, there will be a variety of actors with different interpretations of performance data, each making different arguments about the actions implied. Incrementalism suggests that cognitive limitations eliminated the role of performance information in debate.67 However, the interactive dialogue model suggests that no single actor attempts to develop a full account of all Interactive Dialogue Model of Performance Information Use 111 performance information; instead one actor uses only the information that is helpful to make arguments convincing. By selecting information consistent with prior preferences, advocates do not face an information overload. The actors using the performance information have different positions, motivations, priorities, and understanding of what the data means and what actions should result from the information . In short, the use of performance information is a subjective exercise and rarely removes much of the ambiguity from decisions. Once we incorporate the assumption of roles and advocacy, we expect actors to selectively present performance data in a context that supports their point of view and to discount conflicting information.The political nature of decision making will interact with, rather than be replaced by, performance information. Advocacy and ideology will continue to shape allocation decisions, using performance information as a tool. Rather than present information comprehensively, giving equal balance to all, actors will highlight specific pieces of data, offer plausible explanations for why performance occurs, and suggest how it can be improved. Performance information, when used, will not necessarily engender consensus and agreement. This depends greatly on the homogeneity of the actors involved, their interpretation of the data, their ability to persuade others, and their power in the decision process. In some cases, what one group of decision makers concludes is a reasonable interpretation and an appropriate response may be completely at odds with another group looking at similar information. A simple example is how different regions have reacted to performance information about welfare-to-work programs. Fording, Schram, and Soss found that conservative regions in Florida were more likely than liberal regions to impose sanctions on job...

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