Concepts of Rationality and the Policy Process

Political scientists are seen as having some technical expertise in policy studies which might help policy-makers in devising policies which “work”. Difficulties are likely to arise, however, if we do not first ask some fundamental questions. One seemingly obvious, though extremely difficult, question is “what are policies for ?” Having categorized the main objectives of policy-making into three broad categories – namely “ real” goods and services, agenda management , and. consensus seeking – we go on to ask how these objectives can be reached in a rational way. We attempt to answer this question by considering a number of theoretical problems and go on to suggest an operational meaning of rationality and its implication for the organization of policy-making structures. We suggest that a distinction is made between sector rationality, coordinated rationality and decentralized rationality. We also discuss the nature of policy communities, the degree to which they are becoming overcrowded due to demands for greater (and often unconventional) participation and the problems of achieving both consensus and rationality.