POLS4011 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Economic And Social Research Council, Punctuated Equilibrium, Bounded Rationality

• School: ANU
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLS4011
• Professor: Dr Annika Werner

Document Summary

Topics: constraints on rational policy-making: early critique, new approaches. Challenge to rational ebpm: psychology of policy making: bounded rationality, the environment of policy making. Multiple stream analysis: drawn attention to the context to which the decisions are made. Social science has co-existed with gov since the enlightenment. From the perspective of social science the demands of gov constantly outstrip its ability to deliver the type of knowledge gov requires. Blunkett"s speech is in fact an expression of the new labour gov to be social science. The gov sees in one particular mode of doing social science-piecemeal social engineering. The key role for social scientist is to help decide our overall strategies. Blunkett highlights four charges against social scientific research: According to blunkett social scientic research cannot deliver better policy. According to popper at present the sociological knowledge for large-scale engineering is simply non-existent. Popper proposes piecemeal social engineering which has no ambition to redesign or transform the entire social system.