This is a book about the quest for rationality in policy making. It is about the search for ways of disciplining the anarchy of politics, of devising an organisational architecture of decision making and institutionalising a style of analysis which would allow men to run their collective affairs more efficiently and more effectively. It is about the frustrating pursuit of an elusive vision – the vision of policy making not as the product of the accidents of power but as an ordered process whose every step is guided by the logic of seeking the greatest happiness of the greatest number – which has haunted the minds of men for 150 years or more. It is a quest shaped by the assumption that there is such a thing as rationality in policy making independent of, and indeed opposed to, the rationality of politics. It is an approach which rejects the original sin view of the world in which policy decisions will inevitably reflect the selfish, grasping and narrow interests of social classes or interest groups, in favour of an optimistic, perfectibility of man, view of the world in which improvements in the machinery of decision making can actually lead to better decisions. It is a vision of an administrative City of God, in which appropriately designed institutions and organisations will make mankind if not good, at least rational.