The Science of 'Muddling Through.'

Lindblom, C. E. (1959). The Science of 'Muddling Through.'. Public Administration Review, 19(2), 79-88.

Type

Journal article

Intellectual base

Primary research

Year

1959

Volume

19

Issue

2

Pages

79-88

DOI

10.2307/973677

DOI registrant

JSTOR

Link

https://doi.org/10.2307/973677

Cited from

behavioral_economics, public_administration_policy

Cited by

2 citations across 2 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Bounded Rationality
  • Lindblom's "muddling through" captures incremental, reversible policy adjustments rather than comprehensive planning.

    This sourceDisjointed incrementalism as bounded-rational policymaking; incremental, reversible adjustments versus synoptic comprehensive planning; directly supports the policy/'muddling through' claim.

    Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract

    Abstract of Lindblom (1959) contrasts the 'branch' method of small, repeated policy steps with the 'root' synoptic method; it supports incrementalism vs comprehensive planning, but never says 'reversible'.

    “Instead he would rely heavily on the record of past experience with small policy steps to predict the consequences of similar steps extended into the future.”

    Read by an automated reader; not a human review. How support was checked

• Incrementalism
  • His account emphasizes restricted margins, intertwined means and ends, repeated comparison with existing policy, and serial correction rather than exhaustive optimization.

Verification

Does it exist? Confirmed. This work's DOI resolves to a registered record, which fixes its identity. That is all it fixes.

Does it back the claim? Read against the text for 1 of 2 citations: 1 supported in part. Each verdict is shown under its citation below, with what in the work backs the sentence.

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