The Limits of Policy Change: Incrementalism, Worldview, and the Rule of Law By Michael T. Hayes. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2001. 204p. $60.00 cloth, $21.95 paper.

Extract

“There remains,” writes Michael T. Hayes in his provocative new book, “a pressing need to educate the public—specialists and nonspecialists alike—on what politics can accomplish, and at what speed” (p. 189). To this end, Hayes challenges what Thomas Sowell (A Conflict of Visions, 1987) calls the tenets of “articulated rationality” (i.e., rational-comprehensive ideals) in the policy process. He vigorously asserts that the benefits of incrementalism (viz., its focus on “partisan mutual adjustment,” its understanding of “the importance of checks on the arbitrary abuse of power,” and “its ability to draw on the dispersion of knowledge throughout the political system” [p. 8]) exceed its costs (e.g., delay and incoherent policy outcomes). Moreover, on balance, “partisan mutual adjustment produces better [emphasis added] policy outcomes than any attempt at rational-comprehensive analysis” (p. 8).