ABSTRACT
This book is about the way that political institutions take decisions; more specifically, it is about the way that Strathclyde Regional Council, one of Britain's biggest public authorities, tackled decision-making from the mid-1970s up to 1980. Although the book looks at local government, the principles it puts forward apply equally to national government and to less formal sorts of public debate, from the media to the parish council. It is about political culture; about the way we think about political argument, and about the principles which control any relatively organised political argument. In particular, it is about principles which control the way we conduct criticism, since criticism is at the heart of any political discussion, and at the heart of any attempt to change things.
