The idea that the only thing missing in a project is “political will” is a cliché representative of our time. We find it again in a Financial Times article about regulating social media ( “The Coming Battle Between Social Media and the State,” January 21, 2025):
But there are two problems with regulating social media platforms. … The second is that to impose effective regulation against unwilling platforms will require determined, unflinching governmental action and political will.
The first meaning of political will is apparent in the vocabulary: “determined” and “unflinching” “governmental action.” Severe laws and regulations must be imposed to control those who don’t want to be controlled. If they don’t submit, their property will be confiscated and they will be fined, jailed, or worse. Ultimately, political will is state violence, threatened or actual. We may call this the raw definition of political will.
A second conception of political will is sugarcoated and more procedural: it is what some politicians or rulers want strongly enough to persuade their colleagues to accept or not reject it as laws or regulations (or extra-legal actions). It does not matter for this understanding of the expression whether the main motivations of state agents are self-interested, as public choice theory safely assumes, or represent an attempt to realize “the social good” or to help or punish this or that group of individuals. Political will in this sense is simply what the rulers can agree on—the output of the rulers’ horse-trading.
An attempt at defining political will was made by Lori Ann Post (a sociologist), Amber N.W. Raile (an expert in “social influence”), and Eric D. Raile (a political scientist), “Defining Political Will,” Policy and Politics 38-4 (2010), pp. 652-676. They quote another researcher observing that political will is “the slippiest concept in the policy lexicon,” and it doesn’t seem they went much farther than that, or at least not farther than the horse-trading definition.
Many people seem to explicitly or implicitly distinguish and elevate a third meaning of the expression, which is focused on the will of the people, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau would call it (The Social Contract, 1762). Except in a mob, the will of the people, if there is such a thing, will not be automatically realized for a host of reasons explained by economics, which may be summarized under the heading of the problem of collective action (see Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action, 1966): everybody wants something but would free-ride if not forced to contribute for his own good. In reality, the will of the people does not exist because there is no homogeneous people—individuals are not identical—and numerical majorities are incoherent (Condorcet paradox and such); it’s a unicorn (see William Riker, Liberalism Against Populism, 1982). The will of the people means nothing but the imposition by state force of the preferences and values of some group, or attributed to some group, on the rest of “the people” and the “enemies of the people,” foreign or domestic (I develop these ideas in my “The Impossibility of Populism,” The Independent Review, 26-1 [Summer 2021], pp. 15-25).
Liberal social contract theories attempt to reconcile democracy with the fact that “the people” as a distinct being, organic or collective, does not exist. The most sophisticated and economically realistic of such contractarian theories is, I believe, that of James Buchanan and his fellow theorists. In a nutshell, they argue that all individuals agree on a virtual contract establishing minimal rules to govern social life and limit violence and state force in the common interest of all. “The people” in the singular and collective form is not only unnecessary but illusory. The supposed will of the people is replaced by the consent of each and every individual at the “constitutional stage.” The political will, if there is any remaining room for this concept, might be the (suspicious) maneuvering of state agents (politicians and bureaucrats) to help individuals enforce the unanimous rules they agree on or, ominously, to benefit some individuals at the cost of others. It is safer to avoid the expression.
Note that “people” in its plural and usually indefinite form—say, “the weather was nice and people were playing golf”–is not contentious, but these individuals don’t have a political will in the sense the expression is commonly used.
Another definition of political will would be the state’s capacity to provide what I want, which is related to the Princess-Mathilde conception of the state. The concept points to one side of a conflict over resources, and we are not far from the first definition above.
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The People and Its Will
READER COMMENTS
Craig
Jan 24 2025 at 2:12pm
I suspect they will do something similar as they did with SAR reports from banks. They slapped BoA for a billion+ for not filing enough of them and the banking industry responded by self regulating to avoid getting similarly slapped.
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 24 2025 at 3:30pm
Craig: The more laws there are, the more it is the rule of men instead of the rule of law.
Monte
Jan 24 2025 at 4:17pm
The quote is from Linn Hammergren’s book, The Politics of Justice and Reform in Latin America: The Peruvian Case in Comparative Perspective, in which she defines political will as the “slipperiest concept in the policy lexicon” and “the sine qua non of policy success which is never defined except by its absence.” In other words, things like darkness (absence of light), cold (absence of heat), or testicular fortitude.
Or, for purposes of this discussion, we could borrow this less quaint definition from The Analysis of Political Will and its Role in Leadership: A Study of Portuguese Mayors:
I’m not sure I agree with your raw definition of the concept, Pierre. While PW can certainly lead to state violence, defining it strictly in those terms disregards the broader, more constructive aspects of it as a tool for positive, non-violent change.
Monte
Jan 24 2025 at 8:01pm
That is to say “non-testicular fortitude.”
David Seltzer
Jan 24 2025 at 4:42pm
Pierre: “political will” often implores the greater good fallacy. To wit. The individual ought (normative) to act for what is best for the collective, as opposed to what is good solely for him or herself. It’s the mantra of environmentalist and collectivists. As for this curmudgeon, me, leave me alone. The rest is commentary.
Mactoul
Jan 25 2025 at 9:22pm
Yet civilization exists with all its benefits because some people acted for the collective and not solely for themselves.
David Seltzer
Jan 26 2025 at 11:13am
Mactoul: “Yet civilization exists with all its benefits because some people acted for the collective and not solely for themselves.” Possibly because there was unanimity from individuals who were benefitted severally? As I stated, “The rest is commentary.”
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 29 2025 at 10:49am
Macoul: Like Putin, Modi, or Trump? Poor sacrificial animals!
steve
Jan 24 2025 at 5:50pm
If you have ever run a business or any large group for that matter you have to deal with the political will to do stuff. I think what you are not noting here, or I am missing, is that choice is not between some ideal present state and some new condition that will help some people and hurt others so its essentially the use of force by the state that will be used to change things. In fact, it’s the force of state that maintains the status quo. When you run a business or manage a large group it’s not uncommon that you find the status quo is actually harmful to the majority of people in that entity and in the long term harmful to the enterprise. It’s usually a lot easier to just go with the status quo and hope things will change as it can take a lot of political will to change the status quo.
Steve
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 25 2025 at 1:36pm
Steve: Two comments, if I understand well what you are saying.
My second definition of political will can be applied to private organizations but at great risk of confusion. Political horse-trading is different from a private exchange (except, Buchanan may say, at the very abstract constitutional level).
From another viewpoint, an “organization” in Hayek’s sense must be distinguished from society. Society is the locus in which organizations (and individuals) act. So how an organization operates is precisely not how society works (except for a stylized totally-regimented society).
Mactoul
Jan 24 2025 at 11:59pm
Social contract theories are egalitarian and thus lack all the dichotomies — friend/enemy, citizen/alien, neighbor/stranger, elite/non-elite– that constitute politics.
Preferring theory to reality is a pitfall of academy. If reality doesn’t fit the theory, so much the worse for the reality.
In reality, the collective that you say doesn’t exist, makes demands on the individuals, and the individuals willingly accede to the demands, even of their lives.
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 25 2025 at 1:22pm
Mactoul: Your first paragraph is simply echoing the first definition of political will.
As for your last paragraph, I think it confuses the high-armed-priest of the Unicorn Church, which obviously exists, and the Unicorn, which doesn’t.
Mactoul
Jan 25 2025 at 9:26pm
Dichotomies exist however deplorable you may find them. I note you have needed to smuggle in the state/people dichotomy in order even to pose the problem.
And where did the state come in if not from the people? And why did the people form the social contract if not for the purpose of forming the state and to express their political will?
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