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224 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1991
The three categories of perversity, futility, and jeopardy are in effect more exhaustive than meets the eye. When a public policy or "reform" is undertaken and then runs into problems or is viewed as a failure by some critics, this negative appraisal can in fact be attributed to only two basic reasons:
1) The reform is viewed as not having accomplished its mission—perversity and futility are two stylized versions of this turn of events;
2) The costs that are incurred and the consequences that are set off by the reform are considered to outweigh the benefits—a good portion of this (vast) territory is covered by the jeopardy argument...
move public discourse beyond extreme, instransigent postures of either kind, with the hope that in the process our debates will become more "democracy friendly".In light of recent events, this briefly sketched hope might seem merely quaint, although Hirschman does acknowledge the hard work required to make democracy work. Writing in 1991, it's easy to understand how he might have failed to predict Trump and Johnson, Fox News and YouTube, Proud Boys and Oathkeepers, the aggressive deployment of agnotology by corporations, politicians and fellow-travellers as a tool for confusion and demoralisation, and the increasingly closed, radicalised and potentially violent epistemic communities contemporary "conservatives" are becoming.
The participants should not have fully or definitavely formed opinions at the outset; they are expcted to engage in meaningful discussion, which means that they should be ready to modify initially held opinions in the light of arguments of other particiapants and also as a result of new information which becomes available in the course of the debate.