ABSTRACT
As a response to the strong, overweening assumptions of the rational model, there arose important critiques from a number of different camps: sociology, political science, anthropology, philosophy, etc. In some of these instances, the critical program was developed so thoroughly that we can recognize this as its own mode of analysis. True, the critical endeavor is largely a negative one, i.e., the uncovering of inconsistencies and deficiencies in the object of criticism rather than the positing of alternative conceptualizations of policy (or utopia). Nevertheless, critique is a legitimate and often powerful mode of policy analysis with roots dating back to the earliest philosophers (e.g., the skeptical frame of analysis of Socrates and later Descartes).
