Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning¶
Rittel, H. W. J., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2), 155-169.
Cited by¶
3 citations across 3 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Leverage Points
- Meadows 2008 Thinking in Systems condensed this and emphasized that paradigm shifts are rare, hard, and stable once achieved
This sourceIntroduces "wicked problems" as a category distinct from well-structured search problems: vague initial states, contested goals, non-enumerable operators, and shifting success criteria; foundational for design thinking and policy analysis.
- Meadows 2008 Thinking in Systems condensed this and emphasized that paradigm shifts are rare, hard, and stable once achieved
- Problem Framing
- A situation admitting more than one defensible description → a selection of boundary, units, levers, causal assumptions, and success criterion → a bounded solution space with an evidence-relevance rule attached → an exclusion set that remains inspectable and revisable.
This sourceArgues that planning problems admit many defensible formulations and have no stopping rule, so where work stops is a property of the formulation rather than of the situation.
Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract
Rittel & Webber's abstract backs only the opening link of the chain — that a policy situation has no single definitive description — and says nothing about the selection, bounding, or exclusion steps that follow.
“Policy problems cannot be definitively described. Moreover, in a pluralistic society there is nothing like the undisputable public good; there is no objective definition of equity; policies that respond to social problems cannot be meaningfully correct or false; and it makes no sense to talk about “optimal solutions” to social problems unless severe qualifications are imposed first.”
- A situation admitting more than one defensible description → a selection of boundary, units, levers, causal assumptions, and success criterion → a bounded solution space with an evidence-relevance rule attached → an exclusion set that remains inspectable and revisable.
- Problem Space
- Structural tension: Many real-world problems are ill-structured—initial state is vague or contested, goal is ambiguous or contested, operators are not fully enumerable, and success criteria are multivalent or shifting—a class Rittel and Webber (1973) named "wicked problems" to mark them as categorically distinct from the well-structured search problems classical formalisms assume.
This sourceIntroduces "wicked problems" as a category distinct from well-structured search problems: vague initial states, contested goals, non-enumerable operators, and shifting success criteria; foundational for design thinking and policy analysis.
Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract
The abstract names “wicked” problems as distinct from “tame” ones and says policy problems cannot be definitively described, but gives no enumeration of the four properties.
“They are “wicked” problems, whereas science has developed to deal with “tame” problems. Policy problems cannot be definitively described. Moreover, in a pluralistic society there is nothing like the undisputable public good; there is no objective definition of equity”
- Structural tension: Many real-world problems are ill-structured—initial state is vague or contested, goal is ambiguous or contested, operators are not fully enumerable, and success criteria are multivalent or shifting—a class Rittel and Webber (1973) named "wicked problems" to mark them as categorically distinct from the well-structured search problems classical formalisms assume.
Verification¶
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