The more pressing question is not "whiter the policy process" but whether the policy process framework (or heuristic) can be useful in moving the policy sciences toward a set of policy-oriented theories. The quest for a policy theory was,after all,the clear intention of Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith and of Elinor Ostrom, not the denigration of the "straw man" policy process heuristic. To this particular question, the answer must be much more agnostic. Lasswell's (1971) proposed "maximization theorem"is a candidate (see Brunner,1991,pp.77-79): it