The Politics of "Muddling Through"

"Muddling through" seems to me definable as managing to accomplish a task or solve a problem in spite of a lack of suitable organization, vision or even understanding of the issue, or any decision to acquire any, as when one gets by by on the basis of small ad hoc adjustments.

Those who have a high level of confidence in the wisdom of existing arrangements, messy though they may be; and who are not much given to planning, science, system in meeting major challenges, and may be inimical to them as such; tend to have a high level of confidence in the chances of "muddling through" even in the face of large and/or novel economic, social, political problems.

Those who have less confidence in existing arrangements, and who think that planning, science, system have their place, tend to be less confident in muddling through.

As this implies different political tendencies have different attitudes toward muddling through--with those leaning right more inclined to it, those leaning left less so. Thus was "muddle" a bugbear of H.G. Wells, while that champion of that form of conservatism called "centrism" Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. was a vehement proponent of "muddling through" as the only approach suitable to the pluralistic, pragmatic, "free society" for which he stood, and (showing his, and centrism's, conservatism again) sneered at those who disagreed with that position as sad head cases unable to deal with life's complexities.

However, one should add that besides general predisposition there is the matter of how seriously they take the problem in question. Confidence in "muddling through," after all, is often a matter of complacency toward an issue, or more cynically, an evasion. Those on the right can and do have a capacity for supporting quite drastic action--as seen in their greater readiness to support a use of military force--while the confidence of many on the right that society will get along in the face of, for example, climate change reflects that they are simply not all that exercised about the problem. By contrast those who really do see in climate change an urgent problem are apt to look at society's record in regard to redressing climate change and see in it the affirmation of their worst suspicions about muddling through as the do-nothingism of people who simply don't care about the issue and have no interest whatsoever in inconveniencing powerful interests over it.