Theft at the Public Till
seeing/moving/seeing reveals new meanings, goals, and criteria, some of which are found to be mutually incompatible, requiring the framing of new problems, opportunities, or dilemmas. As the policy object changes shape, a architect nuances how new mean- ings, constraints, and criteria emerge and, on the basis of these discoveries, successively resets the problem of the developing policy situation. Problem solving must be adequate to facts of the problematic situation that may be discovered as the unanticipated consequences of earlier moves are de- tected, and it must also take account of the multiple, partly incompatible requirements of which the architect becomes aware over time. Of course, the validity and import of the new information may not be fully apparent until subsequent steps have been taken making use of the information. As the new in formation becomes available, it must be provisionally considered useful; otherwise the line of argument through which it was revealed would have to be abandoned. In other words, information about constraint conditions not so far considered may or may not be appropriate, but it will not be until the conclusion of subsequent operations that the value of the information can be fully assessed. Policy architects invent modifications of the policy object in order to solve problems, exploit opportunities, or resolve dilemmas and these inven- tions may be more or less adequate to the problems they are intended to solve or the dilemmas they are intended to resolve. Moreover, these inventions may yield unintended consequences that the architect finds more or less desirable. The policy architect may learn from webs of moves, detected consequences, and appreciations derived from previous episodes of policy inquiry. However, this simple picture· of architecture leaves out critically im- portant kinds of complexity, discontinuity, and uncertainty that are as important to policy design as they are to the design of material objects. Decision makers face serious limitations in attention, memory comprehen- sion, and communication. Most students of individual decision making seem to allude to some more or less obvious biological constraints on hu- man information processing, although the limits are rarely argued from a strict biological basis. In a similar way, students of organizational decision
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