Abstract
The task of analysis is to create problems, preferences tempered by possibilities, which are worth solving. A difficulty is not necessarily a problem; that depends on what I can do about it, including whether it is worth my while to try. My inability to go to Mars, a famous gap between aspirations and actuality, is not a problem but a longing to overcome my limitations. My inability to explain the influence of the tides on the rise and fall of the stock market is not a problem unless I have a hypothesis suggesting how I might influence factors by which the two events might be linked. Only by suggesting solutions, such as programs linking governmental resources with social objectives, can we understand what might be done. Policy analysis involves creating problems that are solvable by specific organizations in a particular arena of action. A problem in policy analysis, then, cannot exist apart from a proposed solution, and its solution is part of an organization, a structure of incentives without which there can be no will to act.
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Notes
Michael Crozier, The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), pp. 186–187.
See also Martin Landau, “On the Concept of a Self-Correcting Organization,” Public Administration Review Vol. 33, No.8 (November–December 1973), pp. 533–542.
C. R. Odom and E. Blystone, “A Case Study of CMP in a Manufacturing Situation,” Journal of Industrial Engineering, Vol. 15 (November–December 1974), pp. 306–310
C. P. Cray and R. Reiman, “PERT Simulation,” Journal of Systems Management Vol. 20 (March 1969), pp. 18–23;
K. MacCrimmon and C. Ryavec, “An Analytical Study of the PERT Assumptions,” Operations Research (January–February 1964), pp. 16–37; and an excellent student paper by Jonathan Bendor, “The Seven-Fold Path to PERT.”
Harvey M. Sapolsky, The Polaris System Development: Bureaucratic and Programmatic Success in Government (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972 ).
For anticipatory interpretation, see Robert K. Merton, “Manifest and Latent Functions,” Social Theory and Social Structure ( New York: Free Press, 1969 ).
Peter F. Drucker, “What Results Should You Expect? A User’s Guide to MBO,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 36 (January-February 1976 ), pp. 1–45.
See Eleanor Bernert Sheldon and Howard E. Freeman, “Notes on Social Indicators: Promises and Potential,” Policy Sciences, Vol. I (Spring 1970 ), pp. 97–111.
For evidence see Aaron Wildaysky, Budgeting: A Comparative Theory of Budgetary Processes (Boston:Little Brown, 1975), passim.
Jeanne Nienaber, Aaron Wildaysky, The Budgeting and Evaluation of Federal Recreation Programs, Or Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees ( New York: Basic Books, 1973 ), pp. 116–142.
See Martin Landau, “On the Concept of a Self-Correcting Organization,” Public Administration Review Vol. 33, No. 6 (November–December 1973), pp. 533–542.
See Martin Landau, “Redundancy, Rationality, and the Problem of Duplication and Overlap,” Public Administration Review Vol. 29 (July–August 1969), pp. 346–358.
Giandomenico Majone, “The Role of Constraints in Policy Analysis.” Quality and Quantity, new series, Vol. 8 (1974), pp. 65–76.
See James S. Coleman, Policy Research in the Social Sciences ( Morristown, N.J.: General Learning Press, 1972 ).
David H. Stimson and Ruth H. Stimson, Operations Research in Hospitals: Diagnosis and Prognosis (Chicago: Hospital Research and Education Trust, 1972); they evaluate several hundred analyses of hospital administration and suggest that a good 90 per cent were ignored or opposed by the sponsoring agency.
For an informative study see Victor G. Nielsen, “Why Evaluation Does Not Improve Program Effectiveness,” Policy Studies Journal (June 1975).
John Brandis, “Managing and Motivating by Objectives in Practice,” Management by Objectives, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1974), p. 17.
Jong S. Jun, “Management by Objectives in a Governmental Agency: The Case of the Social and Rehabilitation Service,” Social and Rehabilitation Service, Department of HEW (August 1973).
See Wildaysky, The Politics of the Budgetary Process, 3rd edition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978 ).
For numerous examples see Naomi Caiden and Aaron Wildaysky, Planning and Budgeting in Poor Countries (NewYork: John Wiley, 1974).
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© 1979 Aaron Wildavsky
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Wildavsky, A. (1979). Policy Analysis is What Information Systems are Not. In: The Art and Craft of Policy Analysis. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04955-4_2
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