People come to any particular policy situation with a stock of notions about the
degree and nature of relevant variety based on their prior actual or virtual experiences
(including socialization, accepted history, academic learning). Thus Grammig
(2002, 56) reports that a development assistance project was for experts of different
nationalities ‘‘an empty shell that each participant filled with his own meaning.’’
What is learned about whom usually results from prior judgements about the
importance of a culture or subculture and sufficient curiosity to enquire about it.
We are more likely to have elaborated profiles of others we have dealt with before and
previously treated as important, and less likely to have such about those rarely
encountered or thought lacking in wealth, coercive power, status, or rectitude. Of
course players in policy systems and policy issues are a heterogeneous lot in terms of
who they have encountered and treated as important. In sum, which and how many
differences get recognized (or denied) are political and cultural matters. Public
policies shape and are shaped by those recognitions, especially with regard to the
processing of actual experiences into notion-related interpretative precedents,
maxims, fables, and warnings.