The senate agriculture committee produces a homeostat

Abstract

Agricultural policy making between 1960 and 1973 is examined drawing on Herbert Simon's conception of procedural rationality. The basic structure of current agricultural policy evolved during the period studied. The paper suggests that policy and policy making interact narrowing the search for a law until it achieves a combination of provisions that is an equilibrium. The computational ‘routines’ used in calculating consequences of provisions of legislation are extracted from the text of committee hearings and analyzed as a system of inequalities. The paper also discusses what satisficing means in this policy making process.