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A Strategy of Decision
Braybrooke and Lindblom's 1963 monograph laying out the full theoretical apparatus of disjointed incrementalism — the book where the 1959 article's informal argument became a rigorous account of how policy analysis should be conducted in conditions of complexity.
A Strategy of Decision: Policy Evaluation as a Social Process is the book Lindblom wrote with philosopher David Braybrooke to convert the 1959 article's informal argument into a systematic theoretical framework. Published in 1963, it remains the most thorough account of disjointed incrementalism — the eight-feature analytical strategy that the 'muddling through' shorthand points toward. The book's subtitle encoded a central thesis: evaluation is not a technical exercise conducted by isolated analysts but a social process distributed across many actors with competing perspectives.
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The book systematically contrasted disjointed incrementalism with what the authors called the synoptic ideal — the comprehensive rational planning model that dominated policy-analysis pedagogy. For each feature of the synoptic ideal, the authors described a corresponding feature of disjointed incrementalism and argued that the latter was better adapted to the cognitive, informational, and political conditions of real policy-making.
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