Excerpt
SIR Winston Churchill once muttered in a fit of anger that democracy was an abominable form of government. “Of course,” he added, “it has one redeeming feature. It is far better than anything else.” The frustration Churchill voiced about his particular system of governance has been voiced at one time or another by every political leader from Mahatma Ghandi to Mikhael Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan about their systems. And if these individuals who wield such awesome power within their systems find themselves frustrated, what then of the average citizen seeking redress of grievances, or the scientist trying to explore new avenues of research, or the problem-solvers proposing new solutions?.
The decision context
Influencing public policy is no easy task. Thematic variables surround every decisionmaking process and every policymaking level in the process. On any given issue, these variables will operate at the executive, legislative, and administrative levels, and if more than one unit of government is involved, decision-makers from each of those units and all of those levels will be filtering their decisions through the matrix of concerns. Each policy decision is, in fact, not one decision but a series of incremental decisions that …
Footnotes
James B. Wood is president of Wood Communications Group, 6425 Odana Road, Madison, Wisconsin 53719. Gordon Chaters is professor and academic program director, Soil Science and Water Resources Center, University of Wisconsin, 1975 Willow Drive, Madison 53706.
- Copyright 1988 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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