Incrementalism

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In politics, the term "incrementalism" is also used as a synonym for Gradualism.

Incrementalism is a method of working by adding to a project using many small incremental changes instead of a few (extensively planned) large jumps. Logical incrementalism implies that the steps in the process are sensible. [1] Logical incrementalism focuses on "the Power-Behavioral Approach to planning rather than to the Formal Systems Planning Approach". [1] In public policy, incrementalism is the method of change by which many small policy changes are enacted over time in order to create a larger broad based policy change. Political scientist Charles E. Lindblom developed this theoretical policy of rationality in the 1950s as a middle way between the rational actor model and bounded rationality, as both long term, goal-driven policy rationality and satisficing were not seen as adequate.[ citation needed ]

Contents

Origin

Most people use incrementalism without ever needing a name for it because it is the natural and intuitive way to tackle everyday problems, such as making coffee or getting dressed. These actions normally do not require extensive planning and problems can be dealt with one at a time as they arise.[ citation needed ]

Even in processes that involve more extensive planning, incrementalism is often an important tactic for dealing reactively with small details. For example, one might plan a route for a driving trip on a map, but one would not typically plan in advance where to change lanes or how long to stop at each traffic light. [2]

Lindblom's essay “The Science of Muddling Through” (1959) helped policymakers understand why they needed to consider a different approach when making policy changes. The goal for the new perspective of incrementalism was for policy makers to avoid making changes before they really engaged and rationally thought through the issue. [3] [ self-published source? ]

Contrasts to other planning methodologies

In large projects following some type of strategic planning, there is normally a need to allocate time to plan the project in order to avoid "fire fighting", in other words the avoidance of time delaying issues. In contrast to other systems of planning such as top down, bottom up, and so on, incrementalism involves concentrating on dealing with the immediate problems as they arrive and avoiding trying to create an overall strategic plan. This means muddling through the issues at hand based on importance.[ citation needed ]

Strategic implementation is a very well thought out plan of implementation that is the opposite to incrementalism. Although the plan involved with the strategic implementation might work incrementally it has set objectives at set times with little to no intention of muddling through the process. In other words, every part of the implementation would be expected and planned for ahead of time.[ citation needed ]

The antithesis of incrementalism is that work must be accomplished in one single push rather than through a process of continuous improvement. All work must be planned, only presented when complete and work in progress must be hidden.[ citation needed ]

In political science, research on incrementalism has largely been incorporated into the study of Punctuated equilibrium in social theory, which views policy change as periods of incremental improvement punctuated by major policy shifts.[ citation needed ]

Advantages

The advantages of incrementalism over other formal systems is that no time is wasted planning for outcomes which may not occur.[ citation needed ]

Disadvantages

Disadvantages are that time may be wasted dealing with the immediate problems and no overall strategy is developed. Incrementalism in the study of rationality can be seen as a stealthy way to bring about radical changes that were not initially intended, a slippery slope.

Criticisms

Throughout Lindblom's career, there were many critics of incrementalism. Many believed that doing better meant moving past incrementalism, taking bigger steps in policy. Critics no longer wanted to muddle through, but deal with the issues as a whole. Critics also wanted complete analysis of policy alternatives, unlike incrementalism, which just touches on this analysis. [7]

Usage

Incrementalism is commonly employed in politics, engineering, software design, planning and industry. Whereas it is often criticized as "fire fighting", the progressive improvement of product designs characteristic, e.g., of Japanese engineering can create steadily improving product performance, which in certain circumstances outperforms more orthodox planning systems.[ citation needed ]

Another example would be in small changes that make way for a bigger overall change to get past unnoticed. A series of small steps toward an agenda would be less likely to be questioned than a large and swift change. An example could be the rise of gas prices, the company would only raise the price by a few cents every day, instead of a large change to a target price overnight. More people would notice and dispute a dramatic, 10% increase overnight, while a 10% increase over a span of a week would less likely be even noticed, let alone argued. This can be applied in many different ways, such as, economics, politics, a person's appearance, or laws.[ citation needed ]

Examples

In the 1970s, many countries decided to invest in wind energy. Denmark, a small country of around 5 million people, became a world leader in this technology using an incremental approach [8] while more formal design processes in the US, Germany and the United Kingdom failed to develop competitive machines. The reason for the difference of approach was that the Danish wind industry developed from an agricultural base whilst the American and UK wind industries were based on hi-tech aerospace companies with significant university involvement. [9] While the Danes built better and better windmills using an incremental approach, those using formal planning techniques believed that they could easily design a superior windmill straight away.[ citation needed ]

In practice, however, windmill design is not very complicated and the biggest problem is the tradeoff between cost and reliability. Although the UK and the U.S.A. designs were technically superior, the lack of experience in the field meant that their machines were less reliable in the field. In contrast, the heavy agricultural windmills produced by the Danes just kept turning, and by 2000 the top three windmill manufacturers in the world were Danish. [9]

The Central Arizona Project and the Salt River Project display the use of Innovation and incrementalism. There was a Plan 6 cost-sharing program that was a component in both of these projects and displayed innovations of the external enforcers and internal entrepreneurs and how they muddled through as well as collaborated incrementally to work on these projects with many different players in the mix. [10]

The resource allocation in local authorities is riddled by politics and provides the underlying methods of incrementalism in the negotiations process of putting local authorities priorities together. [11] Looking the United States Federal Budget is a back and forth negotiation between politicians and provides great insight of incremental change. [12] Every year a new budget must be formed to allocate funds to the agencies such as the DoD and government programs such as Social Security and Medicare. The amounts with which are decided gradually change based on the importance as well as efficiencies and inefficiencies of agencies or priorities.[ citation needed ]

Incrementalism is a planning methodology normally found where a large strategic plan is either unnecessary or has failed to develop and for that reason it is often just called "muddling through". [13] [ unreliable source? ] Incrementalism is the antithesis of intrusive central planning, which can create rigid work systems unable to deal with the actual problems faced at the grassroots level. [9] However, without a central planning framework incremental working is difficult to support within structured systems and therefore requires a degree of self-reliance, skills and experience of those dealing with the problems such as is found in autonomous work groups.[ citation needed ]

See also

Related Research Articles

Gradualism, from the Latin gradus ("step"), is a hypothesis, a theory or a tenet assuming that change comes about gradually or that variation is gradual in nature and happens over time as opposed to in large steps. Uniformitarianism, incrementalism, and reformism are similar concepts. For the Social democratics, the socialist society is achieved through gradualism.

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References

  1. 1 2 Quinn, James Brian (1978). "Strategic change: 'Logical Incrementalism'". Sloan Management Review. 20 (1): 7–19. OCLC   425870726. ProQuest   206763493.
  2. ↑ https://www.theburningofrome.com/trending/what-is-the-logical-incrementalism-approach/
  3. ↑ Williams, Andrew P. "Incrementalism". Archived from the original on 21 November 2015.
  4. ↑ Anderson, Sarah; Harbridge, Laurel (May 2010). "Incrementalism in Appropriations: Small Aggregation, Big Changes". Public Administration Review. 70 (3): 464–474. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6210.2010.02160.x. JSTOR   40606404. ProQuest   853274385.
  5. ↑ Singh, Vikram Singh (2012). Public Administration Dictionary. Tata McGraw Hill Education. p. 84. ISBN   978-1-259-00382-0.
  6. ↑ Vladeck, Bruce C. (February 2001). "Medicare and the Politics of Incrementalism". Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law. 26 (1): 153–160. doi:10.1215/03616878-26-1-153. PMID   11253451. S2CID   72945873.
  7. ↑ Lindblom, CE (November 1979). "Still Muddling, Not Yet Through". Public Administration Review. 39 (6): 517–526. doi:10.2307/976178. JSTOR   976178.
  8. ↑ Heymann, Matthias (1998). "Signs of Hubris: The Shaping of Wind Technology Styles in Germany, Denmark, and the United States, 1940-1990". Technology and Culture. 39 (4): 641–670. doi:10.1353/tech.1998.0095. JSTOR   1215843. S2CID   108867109.
  9. 1 2 3 Garud, Raghu; Karnøe, Peter (February 2003). "Bricolage versus breakthrough: distributed and embedded agency in technology entrepreneurship". Research Policy. 32 (2): 277–300. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.1000.5216 . doi:10.1016/S0048-7333(02)00100-2.
  10. ↑ Micale, Linda Marie (1990). Policy change as innovation and incrementalism: The case of Plan 6 cost-sharing (Thesis). hdl:10150/291998. ProQuest   303793098.
  11. ↑ Williams, R. P. (1986). Incrementalism and the politics of resource allocation in local authorities (Thesis). ProQuest   1477359910.
  12. ↑ Gray, Roger E (2014). An examination of the effects of incrementalism and annuality in U.S. government budgeting practices (Thesis). ProQuest   1528557751.
  13. ↑ Overseas Development Institute Research and Policy in Development Group; Fundamental decisions vs disjointed incrementalism ('muddling through')

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