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Political Configuration and Political Dynamics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Bertrand de Jouvenel
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Extract

Our mind strives for statements of configuration and statements of consequence. Where different things stand in relation to one another, that is configuration. How successive events arise from one another, that is consequence. We grasp far more easily disposition in space than process in time; further an incomplete “geographic” account can be valid as far as it goes while an incomplete “historic” account can be highly misleading. The difference in difficulty and reliability between “where” and “how” statements is at a maximum in politics. It is therefore not surprising that political science should have dealt mainly with configurations.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , October 1961 , pp. 435 - 446
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1961

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References

1 Bolingbroke, : Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism ed. Hassall, (Oxford, 1926), pp. 19–20. The italics are Bolingbroke'sGoogle Scholar.

2 Fénelon, : Directions pour la Conscience d'un Roi, published long after they were composed for the instruction of the Due de Bourgogne (Paris, 1748), p. 140Google Scholar.

3 The average life-span of a map of Europe since the beginning of the century has been fifteen years. Germans since 1914 have lived under four regimes. When I first wrote this the French had lived since 1938 under three regimes; now it is already four.