ABSTRACT
It is worth emphasizing the possibility of linking experimentation, prototyping, and intervention as a comprehensive strategy of policy innovation. Prototyping can be effectively used as a contextual procedure that seeks to clarify to all who participate in a situation their role as interacting factors. The depth of self-observation varies greatly from one prototype to another. Political scientists have always been close enough to the perspectives of active politicians to appreciate the importance of the personal factor in politics. The future use of prototyping in conjunction with other methods will greatly improve knowledge of intensity factors in the political process and of the changing environmental and pre-dispositional elements that condition intensity. The chapter suggests that the prototype procedure adds to knowledge and that future political scientists will rely on it to bridge the gap between survey and experimentation, on the one hand, and official intervention, on the other.
