The Disintegration of Policy-making Capacity

Abstract

The events of 1968 proved pivotal to the development of rural settlement policy and the policy-making and implementing structures that supported it. Although the September 1968 decree had reflected some of the concern voiced by critics of the programme, overall the decree marked a further empowering of the policy community, finally giving it the green light to tackle full-scale rural modernisation. With the funding necessary for the programme ensured by the final victory of the agricultural lobby in 1971, the strategy of rural transformation was applied with renewed vigour in rural areas from the early 1970s. Accompanying this intensification of activity was a concomitant strengthening and deepening of the system of policy formulation and implementation that had emerged in the 1960s. The by-product of this development was that the influence of knowledge-based sub-communities was further enhanced and incremental reforms to official policy became more commonplace.