Introduction: The Incrementalist Approach to Defence Policy

Abstract

The incrementalist approach to decision-making is usually associated with the work of two social scientists, David Braybrooke and C. E. Lindblom. According to Braybrooke and Lindblom the purpose of governing should be to keep the options open by piecemeal choice. In their book, A Strategy of Decision, they take issue with the cost-benefit analysis approach to decision-making which derives from economics.¹ In this approach all the costs and benefits which arise from a programme (both monetary and non-monetary) are identified in order that policy-makers can compare benefits to cost and so decide whether a policy is worthwhile, or which among several competing alternatives is most worthwhile. Braybrooke and Lindblom argue that such an approach undermines flexibility in decision-making by closing off options which might prove to be useful in the longer term. Richard Rose has described the distinction between the two approaches in this way:

Instead of attempting to spell out in detail all the presumed causes and effects of alteratives in order to determine a complete and coherent best-value program, governors are advised to move one small step at a time, avoiding long-term choice in favour of a sequence of short-term choices that allow them to reverse field when this appears immediately desirable.²