Uncertainty and political elites’ behavior: introducing the uncertainty grid

Abstract Many, if not most, phenomena faced by political elites are characterized by uncertainty. This characterization also holds for the concept uncertainty itself, with conceptualizations and operationalizations differing both across and within bodies of scholarship. The conceptual vagueness poses a challenge to the accumulation of knowledge. To address this challenge, we integrate and expand existing work and develop an uncertainty grid to map phenomena (e.g., Covid-19; digitalization) or aspects thereof (e.g., vaccines; generative Artificial Intelligence [AI]). The uncertainty grid includes both the nature of a phenomenon’s uncertainty (epistemic and/or aleatory) and its level and enables labeling phenomena as certain, resolvably uncertain, or radically uncertain. We demonstrate the utility of the uncertainty grid by mapping the development of uncertainty during the Covid-19 pandemic onto it. Moreover, we discuss how researchers can use the grid to develop testable hypotheses regarding political elites’ behavior in response to uncertain phenomena.