Name(s):
Lack of political will to cooperate
Lack of political commitment to act on problems
Political unwillingness to change
Failure of political will
Nature
Political will is the magic ingredient of human commitment to a cause which makes things work or make things happen. Without it there is stagnation or, at least, inaction, as expressed in such statements as: "What is missing is political will at the top"; "Lack of political will created difficult obstacles to economic integration"; "It's not a technical problem, it's only a question of political will".
Background
As social and technological innovation increase, it becomes harder to implement changes and catch up. For a country this means that economic, epistemological and organizational sustainability become a question of continuing transformation in a fast-changing world. But what has proved successful as a model in the past then creates inertia within that system, eliciting an unwillingness to change since change is perceived as disrupting what works, whether institutionalized educational patterns or the power and economic privileges of those who emerged through that model and have an investment in the current status. The best adapted and most successful countries then experience the greatest difficulty in adapting and retaining their comparative advantages.