ABSTRACT
The quality of policy management reflects managers' intimidation by uncertainty. Risk and improvisation, on the other hand, seem to have gone underground. "Beyond 1977", the budget states, "it is virtually impossible to make a forecast with any degree of reliability." This is an illustration of how policy management is intimidated by uncertainty. Classifying and tentatively quantifying types of uncertainty can make it less intimidating for policy management because the manager can articulate working hypotheses or assumptions based on his perceptions of the meanings of uncertainty. Policy management based on risk aversion and the overvaluing of certainty produces small decisions. The fundamental problem of uncertainty in the government sector lies in the heavy content of qualitative expectations in its policy goals. Under uncertainty, one has to fall back upon a subjective calculus of probabilities. Coping under uncertainty obviously defines the chief hazard of policy managers.
