Policy is not made once and for all; it is made and re-made endlessly. Policy-making is a process of successive approximation to some desired objectives in which what is desired itself continues to change under reconsideration. Making policy is at best a very rough process. Neither social scientists, nor politicians, nor public administrators yet know enough about the social world to avoid repeated error in predicting the consequences of policy moves. A wise policy-maker consequently expects that his policies will achieve only part of what he hopes and at the same time will produce unanticipated consequences he would have preferred to avoid. If he proceeds through a succession of incremental changes, he avoids serious lasting mistakes in several ways.
In the first place, past sequences of policy steps have given him knowledge about the probable consequences of further similar steps. Second, he need not attempt big jumps toward his goals that would require predictions beyond his or anyone else’s knowledge, because he never expects his policy to be a final resolution of a problem. His decision is only one step, one that if successful can quickly be followed by another. Third, he is in effect able to test his previous predictions as he moves on to each further step. Lastly, he often can remedy a past error fairly quickly-more quickly than if policy proceeded through more distinct steps widely spaced in time. Compare this comparative analysis of incremental changes with the aspiration to em-ploy theory in the root method.
That was the wise Charles Londblom’s 1959 article, The Science of “Muddling Through”. That’s exactly how defense program decision-making should proceed, rather than the fixation on total-system lifecycle planning. Desired outcomes should always be planned and kept in mind, but precise outcomes shouldn’t be predicted and used as a basis for metrics of control. The misunderstanding of this point is what led to USD(R&E) being boxed out of most of RDT&E work, so that USD(A&S) wouldn’t integrate production and particularly sustainment into RDT&E choices. Here’s what I said in GMU’s recent event on budget reform:
The issue with that is that you’re creating a process that’s very reliant on long-range prediction and control of future technologies, environments, future threats, user preferences, and even the economy is something that has to be baked into those projections of the future. When we do a new start for the most part we’re not controlling it in how much money do they need in the year of the budget, it’s what’s the life cycle cost and it’s a what you could call “teletic” versus incremental. it’s looking at the life cycle of what the whole program will be over the future for many years rather than an incremental decision process.
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