ABSTRACT
Although as a recognized, viable strand of policy analysis interpretive policy analysis (IPA) came into its own only in the last two decades, early stirrings go as far back as the late 1950s. While he would not identify himself as such, it can reasonably be argued that Lindblom’s landmark paper ‘The Science of Muddling Through’ (1959), is one of the earliest examples of interpretivism in policy analysis. Lindblom’s argument has generally been interpreted as a sustained critique of rationalist policy analysis, but with hindsight it contained the kernels of a positive statement of qualitative policy analysis. Lindblom distanced himself from the then reigning Rational Actor Model in decision making by arguing that actors choose values, goals, and means simultaneously, that people didn’t hold abstract values but became aware of them as they manifested themselves in concrete, situated policy proposals, that knowledge in the policy process was similarly situated and limited, that different actors held conflicting values and that even the values of single actors were contradictory. His remedy was two-fold: given the situational embeddedness of values and knowledge, don’t engage in heroic policy making but only make incremental adjustments to existing policy. Policy analysis is relational; thus the ‘proof’ of a good policy is when most actors can agree that a proposal is acceptable. Second, expose policy proposals to the trial of pluralism. Each actor will bring his best arguments to bear on his favoured proposal. Taken together this means that the process of open give and take in collective decision making – Lindblom called it ‘partisan mutual adjustment’ – results in better, smarter policies. This is the intelligence of democracy, and with this position Lindblom reconnected policy analysis with democracy (Lindblom 1965).
