|
p.517 I have been claiming that "muddling through" - or incrementalism as it is more usually labeled - is and ought to be the usual method of policy making... Perhaps at this stage in the study and practice of policy making the most common view... is that indeed no more than small or incremental steps - no more than muddling - is ordinarily possible.
p.517 doing better... Incrementalists believe that for complex problem solving it usually means practicing incrementalism more skillfully and turning away from it only rarely.
p.518 Disjointed incrementalism is one of several possible forms of strategic analysis
p.518 The case for strategic analysis as a norm or ideal is simple: No person, committee, or research team, even with all the resources of modern electronic computation, can complete the analysis of a complex problem... the best we can do is achieve partial analysis or, in Herbert Simon's term, a "bounded rationality." [JLJ - The "best" we can do is to develop or to execute a scheme that ought to work, based on what we know or can surmise. "Rationality" is a fig-leaf that covers our "naked muddling" through what we do not understand, using a brain that is making incorrect assumptions, using a plan that is likely wrong, in a manner that might not work. You can call it "rational" if you like.]
p.518 analysts who think in an older conventional way about problem solving pretend to synopsis; but knowing no way to approximate it, they fall into worse patterns of analysis and decision than those who, with their eyes open, entertain the guiding ideal of strategic analysis.
p.518 For complex problems... an analyst... taking as an ideal the development of better strategic analysis will be far more helpful than his turning away from strategic analysis in an impossible pursuit of approximations to synopsis... For complex social problems, even formal analytic techniques... need to be developed around strategies rather than as attempts at synopsis.
p.519 The choice between synopsis and disjointed incrementalism - or between synopsis and any form of strategic analysis - is simply between ill-considered, often accidental incompleteness on one hand, and deliberate, designed incompleteness on the other.
p.519 I think I have failed to communicate to readers just how bad I think policy analysis and policy making are, even under the best circumstances... that is why we need analytical strategies like disjointed incrementalism to make the most of our limited abilities to understand.
p.519 An aspect of disjointed incrementalism... is the relation between its remedial orientation - its concern with identifiable ills from which to flee rather than abstract ends to be pursued - and what appears to be the mind's need for a broad... set of lasting ambitions or ideals... At best they can only be incompletely analyzed - held in the mind loosely... Perhaps they enter into our thinking most significantly through posing trade-off problems, in which incremental gains on one front are traded against decrements on others.
p.519 Simple incremental analysis... is only an aspect of analysis and is or is not useful depending on circumstances and on the stratagem of which it is a part.
p.520 incrementalism in politics is not, in principle, slow moving. It is not necessarily, therefore, a tactic of conservatism. A fast-moving sequence of small changes can more speedily accomplish a drastic alteration of the status quo than can an only infrequent major policy change. If the speed of change is the product of size of step times frequency of step, incremental change patterns are, under ordinary circumstances, the fastest method of change available... Incremental steps can be made quickly because they are only incremental. They do not rock the boat
p.521 Incremental changes add up; often more happens than meets the eye.
p.522 simple incremental analysis... Some features of such analyses are especially pertinent... we take from them not closure but new insight - specifically, powerful fragments of understanding.
p.524 social problems can often be attacked... by "resultants" of interaction rather than "decisions" arising out of anyone's understanding of the problem at hand.... Understanding a social problem is not always necessary for its amelioration - a simple fact still wisely overlooked.
p.524 I have never well understood why incrementalism in its various forms has come to so prominent a place in the policy-making literature... Nor have I well understood the frequency with which incremental analysis as a norm is resisted. That complex problems cannot be completely analyzed and that we therefore require strategies for skillful incompleteness still seem close to obvious to me... I also thought that it was useful to elaborate the ways in which social problems can often be attacked... by "resultants" of interaction rather than "decisions" arising out of anyone's understanding of the problem at hand.
p.525 To a disjointed incrementalist, there is never a last word
|
