METHODS OF THE SECOND TYPE: COPING WITH THE WILDERNESS OF CONVENTIONAL POLICY ANALYSIS

William N. Dunn

Review of Policy Research, 1988, vol. 7, issue 4, 720-737

Abstract: Policy analysts, like allegorical homesteaders, face the seemingly unmanageable task of coping with the wilderness of ill‐structured problems, while concurrently attending to well‐structured problems, which can be addressed with conventional methods of policy analysis. What has appeared thus far as an unmanageable task may become manageable once analysts acknowledge the principle of methodological congruence: The appropriateness of a particular type of method is a function of its congruence with the type of problem under investigation. To be sure, conventional methods of the first type are appropriate and useful for solving first‐order problems, which are relatively well‐structured. Contexts of practice, however, are pervaded by second‐order problems which, variously described as squishy, messy, or ill‐structured, are the class of all first‐order problems. Just as methods of the first type are congruent with the simple analytic demands of first‐order problems, so are methods of the second type congruent with the complex analytic demands of second‐order problems. When policy analysts fail to observe this principle of methodological congruence they are likely to solve the wrong problem. Methods of the second type are not limited to general heuristics, but include specific and readily comprehensible procedures for estimating the boundaries and structure of ill‐structured problems. Since these estimation procedures appear to satisfy requirements of inductive estimates in general, policy analysts can assess their own performance in providing approximate answers to the right question, thus coping with the enemies who lurk in the wilderness of conventional policy analysis.

Date: 1988
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