Steve Teles: belief

Transcript context

…Kludgeocracy, you have a famous piece on this concept, which I take to be the notion there’s so much gridlock that we still have to try to get some things done, but we do it in such convoluted roundabout ways that everything is just a kludge of unwieldy pieces fit together, barely working, and policy just creeks along in a highly ineffective way. In your view, how long can this go on for? Could we just sail along with kludgeocracy for 70 more years? Or is there some kind of breakpoint where it all snaps? I’ll actually say theories in which things build up and then snap are overrated. I think there’s very rare… That’s a functionalist kind of theory and generally I tend to be suspicious of those. I think countries can slowly go into decline. And I think they can go in decline… Argentina was once a very wealthy and prosperous country and it just kept not actually getting its stuff together over time. I think there’s probably some evidence that you could actually… You could keep going in this direction for quite some time if you’re willing to accept gradual economic and political mediocrity. Overrated or underrated, the British system of government?…

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