ABSTRACT
The nature of policy analysis and policymaking is seen more clearly in local government than in either business or central government. Business has long been conditioned to regard survival and growth as a sufficient criterion of success. And central government is beset with external threats and dependent on economic growth for its criteria. Local government by contrast, is much less likely to overlook its real functions. Each of its departments is concerned to maintain some relation at an acceptable level, be it sewers and sewage, roads and traffic, or schools and school children. None of these functions is attainable once for all. None is intrinsically more important than any of the others. And though they occasionally harmonize, as, for example, improved roads help the fire service, they are more likely to impede each other (as the laying of new sewers disturbs roads and traffic) and they all compete for limited resources of money, materials, labor, time and attention. Apart from the functional departments which render the various services of local government, other departments are con cerned with what might be called metabolic control-that is the need to ensure that the outflow of money does not exceed the inflow, that recruitment, training and promotion suffice to fill the vacancies caused by promotion, resignation, retirement and death, and that physical resources from cement to notepaper are replenished before they are exhausted.
