The interpenetration of politics and planning
Abstract This paper argues that judgement on the wider claims of systems planning should be suspended until a fuller evaluation has been completed. As part of this evaluation, it is argued that the relation between the activities of politics and of planning will remain ambivalent so long as the two concepts retain their elastic definitions. In this context this paper examines the British literature on systems planning and concludes that conflicts generated in the formulation of goals cannot be imploded, from the political arena into planning and resolved there through the application of deductive logic. It is argued that goal formulation needs to be reconceived as an activity where the deductive logic of systems planning and the interactive logic of politics interpenetrate and permeate each other. It is argued that neither is it desirable that deductive logic should dominate political activity, nor is it feasible that the interactive logic of politics should dominate the activity of planning. Interpenetration may be seen in the activity of representation, where although the represented are capable of acting, their representatives act for them (not instead of them) in other arenas. It is argued that ultimately, though politics is a logically prior activity and though planning is instrumental, they need to be conceived as interdependent but semi-autonomous activities, linked by the process of formulating desirable goals which are also feasible.
A policy-selection/ goal-formulation model for public systems
This paper attempts to present an analytical framework of analysis of problems relating to public systems. Current optimization models, which originated in the private sector, are not adequate to handle the complexity of the decision making processes in public policy analysis. The proposed model aims at lessening ideological debates over statements of goals, and it emphasizes policy selection through goal redefinitions where both goals and policies are formulated simultaneously. The model is based on an iterative process where consensus over policies is arrived at between the policy maker and the constituents of the public system. The principal feature of the model is that it incorporates political debates and bargains, and provides for the development of insight.
Beyond East–West: Marginality and National Dignity in Finnish Identity Construction
Since the end of the Cold War it has become common for Finnish academics and politicians alike to frame debates about Finnish national identity in terms of locating Finland somewhere along a continuum between East and West. Indeed, for politicians, properly locating oneself (and therefore Finland) along this continuum has often been seen as central to the winning and losing of elections. For example, the 1994 referendum on EU membership was largely interpreted precisely as an opportunity to relocate Finland further to the West. Indeed, the tendency to depict Finnish history in terms of a series of “Westernizing” moves has been notable, but has also betrayed some of the politicized elements of this view. However, this framing of Finnish national identity discourse is not only sometimes politicized but arguably is also too simplified and results in blindness towards other identity narratives that have also been important through Finnish history, and that are also evident (but rarely recognized) today as well. In this article we aim to highlight one of these that we argue has played a key role in locating Finland in the world and in formulating notions of what Finland is about, what historical role and mission it has been understood as destined to play, and what futures for the nation have been conceptualized as possible and as providing a source of subjectivity and national dignity.