THE GOVERNMENTS PRESENT AGREEMENT WITH THE IMF: Misgovernment or Folly?

In a delightful, instructive book, The March of Folly (Ballantine Books, New York, 1985), Barbara Tuchman explains the distinction between what she calls misgovernment (in general), and one of its particular manifestations, folly: Misgovernment is of four kinds, often in combination. They are: 1) tyranny or oppression, .... ; 2) excessive ambition, .... ; 3) incompetence or decadence, .... ; and 4) folly or perversity. This book is concerned with the last in a specific manifestation; the pursuit of policy contrary to the self-interest of the constituency or state involved .... To qualify as folly, the policy must meet three criteria: it must have been perceived as counter-productive in its own time, not merely by hindsight ... Secondly .. a feasible course of action must have been available. To remove the problem from personality, a third criterion must be that the policy in question must be that of a group, not an individual ruler, and should persist beyond anyone political lifetime. With her usual erudition, she goes on to illustrate the rather common occurrence of folly throughout human history - from King Priam's decision to bring in the Trojan Horse, to the perverse policies of the Renaissance Popes which provoked the Protestant secession, to England's loss of her American colonies due to the policies of George III, and finally, to America's more recent folly in Vietnam - and draws conclusions about contributing factors: Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts ....