ABSTRACT
In public administration, interests do not converge so as to achieve decision making, even in wartime, without extrinsic means, such as effective over-all directives. As Harold Stein has also observed, public decision-making is not an act but a process with special characteristics, including its primarily institutional character, the inter-play of the formal and informal, and the political setting and purpose. Three great problems in non-routine decision-making are seen with special clarity and severity in the civil-military field. There are patterns of disagreement both in terms of ends and of means. Secondly, when one thinks in terms of discovering of ‘inventing’ Various organizational processes, there is a double strain both of securing this fund of invention or discovery, and of political evaluation and control. Thirdly, in addition to discovering the tactics for solving arguments, there is the problem of ‘discovering’ the arguments, the issues themselves: the survival of agendas.
