Missing indicators of political will

Indicators of Political Will, Remedial and Coping Capacity? (Part #4)

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All] [Visuals] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]

There is frequent reference to political will and the lack thereof -- most notably at the highest levels of global governance. It is necessarily elusive and as such does not merit an entry in Wikipedia. Various efforts to clarify its nature can be noted.

Especially valuable is a document by the UK Department of International Development (Understanding 'Political Will', January 2004) which notes:

When the success or failure of development policies is discussed, we frequently hear it said that "political will" -- or the lack of it -- affected the outcome. But it is often unclear what this term means. "Political will" is commonly used as a catch-all concept, the meaning of which is so vague that it does little to enrich our understanding of the political and policy processes. There is, however, a way to make it a useful analytical tool. We must begin by giving "political wil"' a quite specific and narrow meaning. Let us define it as "the determination of an individual political actor to do and say things that will produce a desired outcome". This definition has several important implications.

First, it omits a number of things. The incapacity of political or administrative instruments to achieve an outcome is excluded. So is an insufficiency of material resources. So are institutional (or other) impediments and opposition from interest groups which may prevent the desired outcome from occurring....

One last implication of this definition deserves to be treated separately. "Political will" – defined in this way -- is a neutral concept. It can produce both benign and invidious outcomes. Lincoln had "political will" in abundance, but so did Hitler. We therefore need to avoid celebrating "political will" for its own sake, and to ask what purpose it is serving.

Of particular relevance is the summary by David Roberts (What is "political will," anyway? Scholars take a whack at defining it, Vox, 24 December 2017):

Environmentalists are fond of saying that we have all the technology we need to address climate change -- all we lack is political will. They say it so often it has become a running joke among cynical climate journalists. Everything's in place except that one little element! Soon as somebody tackles that, we're golden. But what exactly is political will? How do you make it? How do you know when you have it?

Such claims by those of natural science persuasion ignore the psychosocial factors, as discussed separately (Are Environmentalists and Climate Scientists in Denial? Climate change recognized as primarily a psychological challenge, 2019).

Roberts notes the study by Lori Ann Post, Amber Raile and Eric Raile (Defining Political Will, Politics and Policy, 25 August 2010) as being an attempt to pull together various threads in the academic literature on political will into one clear definition, broad enough to cover different circumstances and institutions but with enough substance to allow for analysis and action in individual situations:

Although frequently invoked as a rhetorical tool in political discussions, "political will" remains ambiguous as a concept. Acknowledging the centrality of political will to policy outcomes, the authors propose a pragmatic and systematic approach to definition. This approach facilitates analysis by identifying particular shortcomings in political will. This identification in turn permits the application of appropriate theoretical frameworks from various disciplines and the effective construction and use of ameliorative measures.

Intriguingly that initiative was supported by the U.S. Department of Defense (under Topic OSD07-T002, Measuring and Mapping Political Will). about which an insightful critical comment has been offered by a blogger (How do you measure political will?, Catnip, 13 March 2007). It is unclear what form the outcome of this project took -- unless that above is to be understood as such. Far more worrisome is if the conclusions to the study for the DoD are effectively classified in the interests of US national security -- a possibility of which the probability is currently high.

This was followed by the comment of Mark Funkhouser (What People Get Wrong About 'Political Will', Governing, May 2018), arguing that it is not some innate quality -- good leaders must create it:

At a recent Governing roundtable, I heard once again that the failure to act on a serious public problem was due to a lack of "political will". Hearing this from people who are wise and good public officials always leaves me a little annoyed. I agree with David Roberts of Vox, who wrote, To me, it has always sounded like the political equivalent of the Force in the Star Wars movies. It explains everything and nothing.

When you hear a public official or pundit say that the reason this or that desirable thing cannot be done is because of a lack of political will, what you are actually hearing is that person blaming other people's moral failings. This is born of a lack of insight and analysis.

It is curious that the theme has been evoked over decades without clarification, most notably with respect to the international system of governance (International Organizations and the Generation of the Will to Change: the information systems required, 1970). Currently it is complemented by invoking the intervention of the so-called "international community", an institutional complex as vague and ill-defined as political will itself, as discussed separately (International Community as God or Sorcerer's Apprentice? Strategic chaos in the absence of an interlocking temporal pattern of longer-term cyclic processes, 2015). As such is the international community to be understood as especially endowed with political will? The uncritical naivety of such appeals is symptomatic of more fundamental issues.

A very recent effort in response to the absence of such an indicator is that of Jonatan Lassa, et al. (Measuring Political Will: an index of commitment to disaster risk reduction, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 34, 2019, March). As the title implies, and as remarked in the case of coping capacity, the focus is curiously restricted to political commitment in relation to potential disaster:

The future of societal resilience depends largely on political commitment to allocate resources to manage and reduce disaster risks and vulnerabilities and build resilience. Lack of political commitment has often been cited as one of the culprits inhibiting countries to prioritise actions towards mitigating hazards and reducing risks in short and long term. While acknowledging existing global disaster risk assessments such as World Risk Report, Climate Risk Index, and Global Assessment Report on DRR, etc., we advocate for a new index with the intention to trigger critical discussion that drive political commitment for disaster risk reduction worldwide. Under the aegis of 2030 global targets of meeting the Sustainable Development Goals and Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, governments should work collaboratively to substantially reduce global disaster mortality and mitigate loss and damage of economic assets and infrastructures.

As with the comment on coping capacity, missing is any focus on political will in a global society in which it is "creeping incapacity" and creeping erosion of political will with respect to factors accumulating to engender a disaster. Can such measurement anticipate what is not conventionally recognized as "vulnerability" -- given that identification of the latter may be highly controversial, especially in a political context. Every political faction frames the policies of other factions as dangerously engendering vulnerability of some kind.

Creeping incapacity has been especially evident in the accumulation of factors leading to crises in the financial system, most obviously that of 2008 -- and currently widely anticipated for the near future (Phillip Inman, Pessimists are predicting a global crash in 2020, The Guardian. 5 January 2019; 4 Early Warning Signs of the Next Financial Crisis, Investopedia, 4 June 2019). As currently understood, measurement of political will would not be able to destect the associated vulnerabilities, despite the disaster to which they may give rise. Much the same could be said of rising inequality, as suggested by the surprising forms of lockdown to which goverments are then exposed, as by the massive Yellow Vest protest across France in 2018-2019 (Systemic Function of Highly Unrepresentative Minorities: recognizing the role of the "Dark Riders" of social change, 2018).

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All] [Visuals] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]