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Wednesday, May 25, 2005
On uncertain interactions
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes in the Telegraph:
One of the more interesting political novels of the 20th century is C.P. Snow’s Corridors of PowerThe essay is a marvellous analysis of how poltical decisions originate, and of how "actions have to be taken, not based on substance, but out of a desire to defuse speculation and talk". Read the full thing.. Its message is that most analysts think of statecraft as being governed either by a conspiracy of powerful interests, or by an over-determined structural logic based on necessity. On the contrary, politics is governed by the uncertain interactions of intellectually and morally flawed human beings, who are half the time just trying to figure out everyone else’s intentions, including their own.
