Policy evolves via incremental adjustments rather than grand designs.
Lindblom's 1959 essay, "The Science of Muddling Through." His argument is normative as well as descriptive: incrementalism is a better method than synoptic planning under real information limits.
In practice
- A council that adjusts its housing allocation formula each year adapts better than one that redesigns the system every decade.
- A team that ships small changes weekly can reverse a mistake; one that ships a redesign annually cannot.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works