6 - Political skills: introducing reform by stealth

Summary

Political skills are vital to effecting a sustainable reorientation of development policy. But like the journalistic cliché ‘political will’, invoking the notion of political skill comes dangerously close to constructing a residual category, a last resort when substantive variables are insufficient to explain events. To argue for political skill as a contributing factor in achieving any outcome is to risk entering into the realm of circular reasoning: actions which are deemed to reveal skill on the part of their practitioner can be verified as skilful only with reference to the outcome which the skill itself was meant to explain. Thus, A occurred because B is skilful; and we know that B is skilful because of the very fact that A occurred.

To put this more concretely, the same political gambit which succeeds for one leader can fail miserably for another. The former's skill, according to conventional standards, is his ability to judge when ‘appropriate’ circumstances were in evidence. But in virtually every such instance the specific circumstances identified as decisive in influencing the timing of the gambit turn out to be highly ambiguous. They could as easily have been interpreted to support a different course of action. In short, the gambit was skilful because it was successful, not the other way around. Politicians considered skilful are those who produce such outcomes with surprising frequency, though even this is rarely subjected to verifcation.