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priorities regarding the allocation of resources for achieving them. It seems evident that what has been said above about the determination of social gcals applies also to the question of social priorities. Competing interests between different groups of the population, for instance between the young and the old, cr between different Occupational groups, make it impossible to adopt a politically neutral solution based on some technically objective criteria. The planner's duty is to provide the political decision maker with estimates on the likely consequences of different choices,
but this is as far as he should go. Even the most advanced techniques of social planning will not absolve the decision maker from making political choices on the basis of his own value judgments, related to his personal concepts and views on the life of people in society. This fact will also mark the limits of rational planning, for it is well known that political choices, which certainly include rational elements, have to take into account people as they are; since rationality is not the only component of the human character, the non-rational side of man will be reflected in them.1
Even the defenders of rational planning may admit, however, that the above limitations of political decision making may not be all that deplorable. After all, we have no practical guarantees of the superiority of the fully rational approach to Government over the political common sense approach applied by the politician elected in a democratic society. Admittedly, the politician will at times take decisions which will be in contradiction with irrefutable technical conclusions, but this may be the price to be paid for freedom from the rule of technocrats. Cn balance, his decisions are likely to be nearer social reality than those which could be taken by a technician of rational planning, hiding his own value judgments in some theoretically objective choices of his plan.
4.
Some basic problems in the development
of social planning techniques
A number of techniques have been developed in recent years for the purpose cf comparing the advantages and disadvantages or the benefits and costs of proposed projects and programmes. The first among these is cost-benefit analysis which, in principle, enables comparison between projects in different sectors with a view to identifying those whose returns are greatest in relation to their cost. A special case of this method is cost-effectiveness analysis, designed to evaluate projects not across sectoral boundaries but within narrowly defined fields where the problem is to attain а given objective at minimal cost. The cost-benefit analysis, originally an economic tool applied to social planning and decision making, is used in situations where major political options cr social objectives have been decided upon and are not part of the analysis. Under these circumstances very little guidance is offered to the decision maker as to which items should actually be considered as costs and which represent benefits. Moreover, some sccial costs and benefits are designated as immeasurable and left out from the analysis, thus making the fundamental decisions independent of any technical aid.
The "Planning, Programming, Budgeting System" (PPBS) method goes a step further in so far as it aims at rationalising public policy decisions and securing a more effective allocation of scarce resources in the public sector. It has two essential functions with regard to the agency whose activities are being planned: first, it establishes the relationships among the agency's objectives and activities, the resource implications of the se activities and their financial expression in a budget; second, it provides analyses of the consequences in teros of estimated cost and expected benefits of possible programme decisions.
The chief conceptual difficulty encountered in the application of the FPES method to public agencies working in the social sector is the Froblem of the definition of the agency's objectives. These are seldom clearly formulated, based as they are not so much on a general consensus of public opinion as on an often precarious political compromise. In the absence of clearly defined objectives the determination of means for achieving them may become a very difficult exercise. On the operational side, the fact that identical or similar objectives are followed by several agencies does not contribute to the success of the practical application this method. Nevertheless, it seems that it is precisely with respect to making total sectoral operations more transparent through the functional grouping of acti- vities of different agencies that the PPBS approach is most useful.
1 Cf. Clément Michel in "The Planning of Social Security", op. cit., p. 90.
cf
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