The quickest way to understand how
values are handled in the method of successive limited comparisons is to see
how the root method often breaks down in its handling of values or objectives.
The idea that values should be clarified, and in advance of the examination of
alternative policies, is appealing. But what happens when we attempt it for
complex social problems? The first difficulty is that on many critical values
or objectives, citizens disagree, congressmen disagree, and public
administrators disagree. Even where a fairly specific objective is prescribed
for the administrator, there remains considerable room for disagreement on
sub-objectives. Consider, for example, the conflict with respect to locating
public housing, described in Meyerson and Banfield's study of the Chicago
Housing Authority (5) - disagreement which occurred despite the clear objective
of providing a certain number of public housing units in the city. Similarly
conflicting are objectives in highway location, traffic control, minimum wage
administration, development of tourist facilities in national parks, or insect
control.
Administrators cannot escape these
conflicts by ascertaining the majority's preference, for preferences have not
been registered on most issues; indeed, there often are no preferences in the
absence of public discussion sufficient to bring an issue to the attention of
the electorate. Furthermore, there is a question of whether intensity of
feeling should be considered as well as the number of persons preferring each
alternative. By the impossibility of doing otherwise, administrators often are
reduced to deciding policy without clarifying objectives first.
Even when an administrator resolves to
follow his own values as a criterion for decisions, he often will not know how
to rank them when they conflict with one another, as they usually do. Suppose,
for example, that an administrator must relocate tenants living in tenements
scheduled for destruction. One objective is to empty the buildings fairly
promptly, another is to find suitable accommodation for persons displaced,
another is to avoid friction with residents in other areas in which a large
influx would be unwelcome, another is to deal with all concerned through
persuasion if possible, and so on.
How does one state even to himself the
relative importance of these partially conflicting values? A simple ranking of
them is not enough; one needs ideally to know how much of one value is worth
sacrificing for some of another value. The answer is that typically the
administrator chooses - and must choose - directly among policies in which
these values are combined in different ways. He cannot first clarify his values
and then choose among policies.
A more subtle third point underlies
both the first two. Social objectives do not always have the same relative
values. One objective may be highly prized in one circumstance, another in
another circumstance. If, for example, an administrator values highly both the
dispatch with which his agency can carry through its projects and good public
relations, it matters little which of the two possibly conflicting values he
favors in some abstract or general sense. Policy questions arise in forms which
put to administrators such a question as: Given the degree to which we are, or
are not, already achieving the values of dispatch and the values of good public
relations, is it worth sacrificing a little speed for a happier clientele, or
is it better to risk offending the clientele so that we can get on with our
work? The answer to such a question varies with circumstances.
The value problem is, as the example
shows, always a problem of adjustments at a margin. But there is no practicable
way to state marginal objectives or values except in terms of particular
policies. That one value is preferred to another in one decision situation does
not mean that it will be preferred in another decision situation in which it
can be had only at great sacrifice of another value. Attempts to rank or order
values in general and abstract terms so that they do not shift from decision to
decision end up by ignoring the relevant marginal preferences. The significance
of this third point thus goes very far. Even if all administrators had at hand
an agreed set of values, objectives, and constraints, and an agreed ranking of
these values, objectives, and constraints, their marginal values in actual
choice situations would be impossible to formulate.
Unable consequently to formulate the
relevant values first and then choose among policies to achieve them,
administrators must choose directly among alternative policies that offer
different marginal combinations of values. Somewhat paradoxically, the only practicable
way to disclose one's relevant marginal values even to oneself is to describe
the policy one chooses to achieve them. Except roughly and vaguely, I know of
no way to describe — or even to understand — what my relative evaluations are
for, say, freedom and security, speed and accuracy in governmental decisions,
or low taxes and better schools than to describe my preferences among specific
policy choices that might be made between the alternatives in each of the
pairs.
In summary, two aspects of the process
by which values are actually handled can be distinguished. The first is clear:
evaluation and empirical analysis are intertwined; that is, one chooses among
values and among policies at one and the same time. Put a little more
elaborately, one simultaneously chooses a policy to attain certain objectives
and chooses the objectives themselves. The second aspect is related but
distinct: the administrator focuses his attention on marginal or incremental
values. Whether he is aware of it or not, he does not find general formulations
of objectives very helpful and in fact makes specific marginal or incremental
comparisons. Two policies, X and Y, confront him. Both promise the same degree
of attainment of objectives a, b, c, d, and e. But X promises him somewhat more
off than does Y, while Y promises him somewhat more of g than does X. In
choosing between them, he is in fact offered the alternative of a marginal or
incremental amount off at the expense of a marginal or incremental amount of g.
The only values that are relevant to his choice are these increments by which
the two policies differ; and, when he finally chooses between the two marginal
values, he does so by making a choice between policies.'
As to whether the attempt to clarify
objectives in advance of policy selection is more or less rational than the
close intertwining of marginal evaluation and empirical analysis, the principal
difference established is that for complex problems the first is impossible and
irrelevant, and the second is both possible and relevant. The second is
possible because the administrator need not try to analyze any values except
the values by which alternative policies differ and need not be concerned with
them except as they differ marginally. His need for information on values or
objectives is drastically reduced as compared with the root method; and his
capacity for grasping, comprehending, and relating values to one another is not
strained beyond the breaking point.
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