Lag in policy conceptualization

Over the past half century, the political class has been content to apply conventional ideas, instead of questioning them. There are no exceptions. Failures of this approach have been disguised. The lag effect is the result of the difference between the evolution of political situations and those of the mental structures of the leadership groups, as well as those of the led. New ideas for new problems, when they can be made known, are difficult for the leadership class to comprehend. Their most basic mental structures are fundamental in that they condition the way they represent the world and the political world. It is they which determine the way in which problems are posed. Intellectual conservatism is thus a structural phenomenon. It is the continued survival of an outdated explanatory system which prevents the elaboration of a strategy appropriate to the control and orientation of planetary strategy.