This book is concerned, in essence with the quest for rationality in decision making, and is founded on the premise that improvements in the machinery of decision-making can actually lead to better decisions. The numerous initiatives of the 1960s and 1970s, established specifically to foster greater policy coordination have fallen foul of the changed political climate of the 1980s, in which the pressures of the marketing place have become the principal determinant of policy formation. Paradoxically, however, this shift has led to renewed interest in policy coordination and, in Joint Approaches to Social Policy, the authors seek to provide a clear understanding of its reality, rather than rhetoric.