How can public managers hope to incorporate the imperatives of postmodern theory into their concrete daily decisions? This article is an attempt to give an analytic tool to the administrator in the form of a formal logic of questions—Comprehensive Policy Argument (CPA). This analysis tool, in the spirit of postmodernism, allows one to deconstruct the methods of conventional efficiency analysis into its fundamental assumptions and principles so that these can be consciously scrutinized. In addition, it opens up the possibility of converting nonmarket assumptions about individuals, collective action, and the role of the state into alternative theoretical foundations for practical policy argument and choice.
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