Introduction

In their seminal paper, ‘Dilemmas in a general theory of planning’, Rittel and Webber note that, in response to societal problems:

Rittel and Webber’s (1973) notion of ‘direction-finding’ is important. This chapter addresses the ways in which policymakers might seek to both orientate themselves towards policy problems and navigate the actions that might be taken to address them. In another seminal contribution, Lasswell’s (1951) notion of the ‘problem orientation’ identifies ‘the scientific study of problems’ and ‘policymaking around these problems’ as the two ‘poles’ of policy analysis (Turnbull, 2008). Yet, as is widely recognised, phenomena such as bounded rationality (Simon, 1955) and wicked policy problems (Rittel and Webber, 1973) mean that ‘policymakers must often act in the face of irreducible uncertainty – uncertainty that will not go away before a judgment has to be made about what to do, what can be done, what will be done, what ought to be done’ (Hammond, 1996: 11).

The claims of evidence-based policymaking (EBPM) as a means for ‘objective’, technical, evidence-informed choice or ‘policy selection’ tend to lose traction as uncertainty and/or controversy increase (Grint, 2005; Hoppe, 2011). As Turnbull (2008: 73) observes, various objections to the EBPM approach include that it pays insufficient attention to problem framing (for example, Rein and Schon, 1977); presumes an inadequate, univocal definition of social problems (for example, Rose, 1977; Lindblom and Woodhouse, 1993); and excludes the symbolic dimension of policy meanings (for example, Yanow, 1996).