Challenges in Strategy-Making
Challenges in Strategy-Making
This chapter describes how state leaders encounter five difficulties while crafting strategies for governing. The first is conflict between the goals identified in Chapter 5. A familiar conflict of goals is that between internal order and human rights. Another conflict among goals arises between external security and internal order. Moreover, the desire to promote economic growth may collide with several other goals, such as national security, internal order, and human rights. A second challenge in crafting governance strategies is uncertainty about the techniques to use to achieve goals. Even when leaders are clear about their priorities, they may be unsure about the most effective ways to pursue them. A third challenge in crafting governance strategies is managing cultural and institutional inheritances, while the fourth challenge derives from turbulence in the governing environment. Some aspects of the environment may remain relatively constant, but other aspects change quickly. This can throw a leader's calculations into disarray. The final challenge is analytic complexity—that is, the difficulty of absorbing knowledge and making judgments about large and complicated questions.
Keywords: state leaders, governance strategies, conflict of goals, uncertainty, cultural inheritance, institutional inheritance, governing environment, analytic complexity
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