Complex Policy Planning: The Government Strategic Management of the Social Care Market

Using a range of qualitative and quantitive research methods, this text seeks to break new ground by applying recent developments in choas and complexity theory to the government planning of personal social services. It creates a theoretical framework that describes the unstable interactions of politicians, state managers and markets in the public sector planning process, and concludes that choas and complexity theory contributes a new paradigm to social care planning where diversity of process and information analysis is vital if optimal policy decisions are to be found.