The Minimal Requirements Approach to Policy Modelling in Public Planning

Abstract

This paper argues that an approach to policy modelling in public planning must deal with the existence of conflicts between actors holding constraint sets, rather than players with strategies able to affect each other's payoffs. This approach builds on the policy level language proposed by Shiv K. Gupta and Laurence D. Richards. Operational definitions of modelling variables, conflict situations and potential pairwise coalitions are given. The approach is simple enough to allow manual calculation in small-scale problems and has a matrix notation which enables the use of computer programs for large-scale problems. A conceptual example which illustrates the features of the proposed modelling approach is presented and discussed.

Keywords:

• planning
• policy analysis
• conflict modelling