A Strategy of Decision
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.
In the AI Story
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.
The eight features: (1) margin-dependent choice, (2) restricted consideration of alternatives, (3) restricted consideration of consequences, (4) adjustment of objectives to policies, (5) reconstructive treatment of data, (6) serial analysis and evaluation, (7) remedial orientation, and (8) social fragmentation of analysis. Each feature contrasts with a corresponding synoptic ideal that assumes clean slates, comprehensive enumeration, fixed objectives, and integrated analysis by a single decision-maker.
The book's most radical feature was its 'social process' framing. Policy evaluation in the synoptic tradition is a task for a single analyst applying rigorous method to a well-defined problem. Policy evaluation in the disjointed-incrementalist framework is a distributed social activity in which many actors with different perspectives contribute partial analyses that aggregate through institutional interaction. The analysis is not performed; it emerges.
The book was criticized from multiple directions. Rationalists argued that it described what analysts did rather than what they should do, confusing description with normative endorsement. Radical critics argued that it sanctioned the status quo by limiting consideration to incremental alternatives. Both criticisms have merit. Lindblom's response, which he extended over subsequent decades, was that the alternative — comprehensive rational planning — was not actually available for complex problems, and that arguing for an unavailable alternative was worse than defending an imperfect one that could actually be practiced.
Origin
Braybrooke, a philosopher at Dalhousie University, brought analytical rigor to the theoretical formulation of arguments Lindblom had developed intuitively. The collaboration sharpened the informal claims of the 1959 article into a framework that could be taught, critiqued, and applied systematically.
Key Ideas
Eight features. Disjointed incrementalism is a specific analytical strategy with eight identifiable procedural and cognitive features, each contrasting with the synoptic ideal.
Social process of evaluation. Policy evaluation is distributed across many actors whose partial analyses aggregate through interaction.
Remedial orientation. The method focuses on specific identified problems rather than on the achievement of positive goals.
Reconstructive data treatment. Data categories and measurement frames are revised as policy proceeds, not fixed at the outset.
Appears in the Orange Pill Cycle
Further reading
- David Braybrooke and Charles Lindblom, A Strategy of Decision (1963)