ABSTRACT
Charles E. Lindblom's writings on power, politics and policy making in the 1950s and early 1960s were generally taken as a brilliant demonstration of the virtues of modest problem-solving, multi-layered bargaining, and "muddling through". This chapter examines the broader context of Lindblom's work as a political scientist concerned with how power relations constrain democratic policy-making. The key issue for Lindblom has been how to achieve Innovative institutional reform under democratic controls. Lindblom accepts that dissent and non-conformity are quite possible in liberal-democracies, unlike in authoritarian systems, but the options available are seen as regrettably narrow, i.e. confined to "secondary" issues. Few observers would disagree with Lindblom that, at a general level, the power resources of business are immense in a capitalist society and that they outweigh, in some crude measure, the resources available to any other category of social actor.
