Political Patience

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04/02/2015

Political Patience

I have been quiet on my blog for the past few months. Quiet in most aspects of writing and corresponding, actually. It is because I have been actively engaged in trying out new ways of doing development differently, with direct and indirect PDIA experiments.

I am learning a lot through these engagements. Some of the lessons are about leadership and politics in the change process. My primary lesson in this area is that politics is always present in change, and is seldom easily understood ex ante or dealt with in any once-and-for-all fashion. You need to pay attention to politics continually, not study it at odd intervals, if you want to engage effectively in change processes. This, I believe, is the difference between political economy engagement and political economy analysis (which I have addressed before, suggesting we need less PEA and more PEE)

I have also learned that patience is probably the most valuable attribute of politics in a change process. I don't just mean the political ability to wait or to not get flustered when things go awry or take longer than anticipated. I mean the political ability to set a course and stick to the direction no matter what comes in the way. This kind of patience is what I think separates politics that builds from politics that simply jumps around looking charismatic.

I think we in academia should spend more time thinking about political patience, supporting it, and even teaching about it.

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