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p.80-81 I propose in this paper to clarify and formalize... the method of successive limited comparisons... the branch method... continually building out from the current situation, step-by-step and by small degrees
p.82-83 two aspects of the process by which values are actually handled can be distinguished. The first is clear: evaluation and empirical analysis are intertwined... The second aspect is related but distinct: the administrator focuses his attention on marginal or incremental values... Two policies, X and Y, confront him... In choosing between them, he is in fact offered the alternative of a marginal or incremental amount of f at the expense of a marginal or incremental amount of g. The only values that are relevant to his choice are these increments by which the two policies differ; and, when he finally chooses between the two marginal values, he does so by making a choice between policies.
p.83 many administrators will be quick to agree that the most effective discussion of the correctness of policy does take the form of comparison with other policies that might have been chosen. But what of the situation in which administrators cannot agree on values or objectives, either abstractly or in marginal terms? What then is the test of "good" policy?
p.85-86 Mutual adjustment... persists through the mutual impacts of groups upon each other even where they are not in communication... mutual adjustment... will often accomplish an adaptation of policies to a wider range of interests than could be done by one group centrally... when decisions are only incremental... it is easier for one group to anticipate the kind of moves another might make and easier too for it to make correction for injury already accomplished.
p.86 Policy-making is a process of successive approximation to some desired objectives in which what is desired itself continues to change under reconsideration.
Making policy is at best a very rough process... A wise policy-maker consequently expects that his policies will achieve only part of what he hopes and at the same time will produce unanticipated consequences he would have preferred to avoid. If he proceeds through a succession of incremental changes, he avoids serious lasting mistakes in several ways. [JLJ - numbering below added for readability]
- In the first place, past sequences of policy steps have given him knowledge about the probable consequences of further similar steps.
- Second, he need not attempt big jumps toward his goals that would require predictions beyond his or anyone else's knowledge, because he never expects his policy to be a final resolution of a problem. His decision is only one step, one that if successful can quickly be followed by another.
- Third, he is in effect able to test his previous predictions as he moves on to each further step.
- Lastly, he often can remedy a past error fairly quickly - more quickly than if policy proceeded through more distinct steps widely spaced in time.
p.88 I suspect that in so far as there is a system in what is known as "muddling through," this method is it.
p.88 [footnote] this same method is inevitably resorted to in personal problem-solving, where means and ends are sometimes impossible to separate, where aspirations or objectives undergo constant development, and where drastic simplification of the complexity of the real world is urgent if problems are to be solved in the time that can be given to them... the central idea in the method is that both evaluation and empirical analysis are incremental. Accordingly I have referred to the method elsewhere as "the incremental method."
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