Start here: “Policymakers also need to worry about those other factors—societal, political, economic, historical, cultural, geographical, governmental, psychological, technological, ethical, religious etc—that are so undeniably part of policy analysis and management.” Or: The very same people who question the use of GDP as a measure of human health and the environment end up being among the first to urge “Increase government budgets by x% of GDP for health and the environment and social protection and this and that, etc. . .”
That pincushion of etcetera’s indicates things are just critical enough to get a nod, but not that critical to actually have to name. So too Samuel Taylor Coleridge argued “matter” was treated like a pincushion whose surface was hidden by all the sensations, thoughts and properties stabbed helter-skelter into it.
You ask today, “But just what are the important factors?,” and you still get a pincushion of “etc’s”. Woe to us. They’re the crisis kitsch of policy analysis. But in reality, as Wittgenstein writes: “Again and again, my ‘etc’ has a limit.”
