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Nonincremental Policy Making: Notes Toward an Alternative Paradigm*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Paul R. Schulman
Paul R. Schulman*
Affiliation:
University of Tennessee
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Abstract

Much of the literature of policy analysis and public administration is dominated by incremental and “divisible goods” paradigms. Policy is assumed to be a process of marginal and adjustive decision making in which benefits are dispensed piecemeal—proportionate to prevailing distributions of power or publicized need. This essay asserts the existence of a class of nonincremental, indivisible policy pursuits for which the analytical weaponry of political science is largely inappropriate. Such policies display a distinctive set of political and administrative characteristics. These characteristics are explained and examined in connection with manned space exploration policy. An assessment is offered of the challenges posed by nonincremental policy to contemporary outlooks in political science.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 69 , Issue 4 , December 1975 , pp. 1354 - 1370
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1975

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Footnotes

*

The author wishes to thank Francis E. Rourke and Matthew A. Crenson of the Johns Hopkins University, as well as T. Alexander Smith, David M. Welborn and T. McN. Simpson of the University of Tennessee for their advice and criticisms regarding this study. In addition, officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation, giving generously of their time, immeasurably advanced the work. Finally, a great deal of support and encouragement were provided by Francis E. Rourke, to whom this essay is gratefully dedicated.

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