Limitations of Comprehensive Planning in the Face of Comprehensive Uncertainty: Crisis of Planning or Crisis of Planners

Abstract

I can summarize my argument quickly. Uncertainties about the present position and possibilities and about the future are inherent in the real world, and no amount of improvement in statistics or computers will change this. The executive capacity ofevery administrative service is limited. By definition, the better it is, the more there is to do; almost by definition one has never enough. The brain drain from less to more developed countries should be sufficient proof of this assertion. Were this not so, there would be no problem. There is every sense in striving to improve an existing situation which, being human, has its necessary faults. But there is no sense in pretending that the limitations do not exist. If comprehensive planning is defined so as to demand knowledge and power that cannot exist, it is obviously impossible. Much aggregative planning and many logically persuasive planning models have come to grief on the recalcitrance of reality, and there is disillusionment with comprehensive planning. In this sense there is a crisis of planners 1. But there is an approach to comprehensive planning which allows for the fact that planners are not God. By concentrating on detailed investigations, limiting the aims of planning to what can be done now, using policy as the major method to get things done, and using the budget more effectively, overall (even “comprehensive†) policies for the economy as a whole can be developed which allow sequential decision-making and recognize both the need for time to elapse and the need to allow for failures, to build in safety factors. If we have learned this, there need be no crisis in planning 2.