We Get What We Organize For: Linking Central Bureaucracies to Local Organizations

Abstract

The vast web of ecosystems that constitutes the Great Plains region is complex, dynamic, and theory-defying. It is approached with disconnected slices of knowledge, pieces of human experience representing little historical depth, tentative hypotheses, best available estimates, and the desire to get things done at the least possible cost and greatest dispatch. It is a given that errors will be made in the formulation and implementation of policies that are intended to enhance ecosystem sustainability. The question is: how will policymakers organize to minimize and correct these errors in the most timely way so that whatever damage done to humans and other living things does not fundamentally threaten the sustainability of Great Plains society and the biotic pyramids upon which our social order depends? This chapter briefly addresses the twin problems of sources of policy error and organizational response to error in policymaking and implementation of policy for sustainable ecosystem management.