ABSTRACT
Let us retrace some of our steps. We began by examining the foundations of policy analysis, tracing it back to the influential model(s) of rationality that grew out of the Enlightenment (but, of course, traces its origins to much earlier Western and Eastern thought). By entering into its foundational elements in some depth, we began to see how its formalization of human cognition (and, by extension, what analysis means) led to a strongly positivist, authoritarian mode of inquiry. It is the construction of policy as a decision that, from that point onward, that has dominated the very way we go about policy analysis. It is, in many ways, a beautiful construct, and the problem really resides in the aspect of dominance.
