CONCEPT
Disjointed Incrementalism
The full theoretical apparatus Lindblom and David Braybrooke developed in A Strategy of Decision (1963) — incrementalism as a coherent analytical strategy with specific procedural and cognitive features, not merely a label for what analysts happen to do.
Disjointed incrementalism is the name Lindblom and David Braybrooke gave to the mature theoretical formulation of muddling through. The 'disjointed' modifier signals that the method does not operate through integrated, top-down coordination but through distributed, partial, and often uncoordinated interventions by many actors pursuing different objectives. The 'incrementalism' signals that each intervention is small and builds on existing arrangements. Together, they describe a mode of institutional intelligence that is messy, contested, perpetually revised, and — in conditions of complexity — more effective than the coordinated comprehensive alternative.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Braybrooke and Lindblom's 1963 book A Strategy of Decision laid out eight specific features of disjointed incrementalism: margin-dependent choice, restricted consideration of alternatives, restricted consideration of consequences, adjustment of objectives to policies, reconstructive treatment of data, serial analysis and evaluation, remedial orientation, and social fragmentation of analysis. Each feature contrasts with a corresponding feature of the synoptic ideal.
The 'disjointed' character