Slow Down, Change Ahead: Is Gradualism a Jewish Value?

I know that on thinking about this at first your soul will necessarily have a feeling of repugnance toward this notion and will feel aggrieved because of it; and you will ask me in your heart and say to me: How is it possible that none of the commandments, prohibitions, and great actions – which are very precisely set forth and prescribed for fixed seasons – should be intended for its own sake, but for the sake of something else, as if this were a ruse invented for our benefit by God in order to achieve His first intention?…. Hear then the reply to your question that will put an end to this sickness in your heart and reveal to you the true reality of that to which I have drawn your attention. It is to the effect that the text of the Torah tells a quite similar story, namely in its dictum: God led them not by the way of the land of the Philistines, although it was near, and so on. But God led the people about, by the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea (Shemot 13:17-18)… For just as it is not in the nature of man that, after having been brought up in slavish service occupied with clay, bricks, and similar things, he should all of a sudden wash off from his hands the dirt deriving from them and proceed immediately to fight against the children of Anak, so is it also not in his nature that, after having been brought up upon very many modes of worship and of customary practices, which the souls find so agreeable that they become as it were a primary notion, he should abandon them all of a sudden. And just as the deity used a gracious ruse in causing them to wander perplexedly in the desert until their souls became courageous…and until, moreover, people were born who were not accustomed to humiliation and servitude… so did this group of laws derive from a divine grace, so that they should be left with the kind of practices to which they were accustomed and so that consequently the belief, which constitutes the first intention should be validated for them…

However, too often leaders prefer to err on the side of moving too slow, minimizing the degree of personal and professional risk, and in the process allowing important and necessary transformations to end incomplete, or worse, in failure. This tendency to move too slow, to take too few risks, is most notable in some of our nation’s traditional strengths, including healthcare and higher education, who most frequently undertake change only at an incremental pace, threatening their local and global competitiveness.

While the slow pace at which these industries embrace change often, and rightfully, stems from their enormous complexity and the degree of diversity and engagement of their stakeholders, we also must acknowledge that unwillingness to change at the appropriate pace may arise from a lack of recognition that there are, or soon will be, viable and aggressive competitors to our current models of delivery. In addition there is a reluctance of governing and oversight bodies, and consequently of executive leadership, to accept the need for controlled risk in achieving timely change… 

…Legal systems tend to be faster-moving institutions than social norms but slower-moving than political institutions. A given law can be changed overnight, but legal systems are rarely changed as rapidly as political institutions, such as electoral rules. On the other hand, the effectiveness of the legal system and the enforcement of laws depend on their acceptance and legitimacy in society and on the expectations of many actors. Thus the legal system is very similar to social norms…

What is the relationship between fast- and slow-moving institutions? Slow-moving institutions are by definition good candidates to influence fast-moving institutions, since the former may change little at a time when the latter is changing dramatically. On the other hand, for this perspective to make any sense, slow-moving institutions must also change continuously, so as to produce inconsistencies with fast-moving institutions and thereby create pressures for change…

The interaction between slow-moving and fast-moving institutions implies that different cultural paths (slow-moving institutions) may affect the appropriate choices of fast-moving institutions. Given our limited knowledge of these interactions, caution is required. Yesterday’s conventional wisdom has often been overturned. Sixty years ago, most intellectuals were convinced that central planning was more efficient than markets. Hardly anybody believes that today. Similarly, only ten years ago, Asian economies were praised for the marvelous effect of Confucian values (family, hard work, and savings). Yet, when the Asian economies were hit by the 1997 crisis, “crony capitalism” became the only term used to name those economies. This discussion carries a number of possible policy implications.

… First, one should take a skeptical attitude towards transplantation of institutions, because the different dynamics of slow-moving institutions may make some fast-moving institutions inadequate in some countries. The above framework provides a rationale for such skepticism. The appropriate question for analysts of development may not be what constitutes a globally optimal set of institutions, but rather whether fast-moving institutions are appropriate to the slow-moving institutions with which they interact. Thus reforms of fast-moving institutions in a given country must in part build on existing slow-moving institutions that have arisen in countries with different cultural and historical pasts. Ignoring these pasts in designing institutional reforms is likely a recipe for failure. The interaction of slow- and fast-moving institutions therefore provides an important cautionary to any development specialist seeking to export “best-practice” institutions.

Second, our current relative ignorance about the interaction between fast-moving institutions and the slow-moving institutions of different countries provides a strong rationale for certain kinds of experimentation and gradualism and, conversely, a strong reason for opposing the imposition of irreversible institutional change in a given country…Indeed, gradualism provides an option of early reversal if the prospects look bad after the introduction of the first reforms, an option that actually makes it easier to gain political support and build constituencies for institutional change…

… Like the choice between competing political institutions, that between competing paradigms proves to be a choice between incompatible modes of community life. Because it has that character, the choice is not and cannot be determined merely by the evaluative procedures characteristic of normal science, for these depend in part upon a particular paradigm, and that paradigm is at issue. When paradigms enter, as they must, into a debate about paradigm choice, their role is necessarily circular. Each group uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigm’s defense.

The resulting circularity does not, of course, make the arguments wrong or even ineffectual. The man who premises a paradigm when arguing in its defense can nonetheless provide a clear exhibit of what scientific practice will be like for those who adopt the new view of nature. That exhibit can be immensely persuasive, often compellingly so. Yet, whatever its force, the status of the circular argument is only that of persuasion. It cannot be made logically or even probabilistically compelling for those who refuse to step into the circle. The premises and values shared by the two parties to a debate over paradigms are not sufficiently extensive for that. As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice—there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community…

To discover why this issue of paradigm choice can never be unequivocally settled by logic and experiment alone, we must shortly examine the nature of the differences that separate the proponents of a traditional paradigm from their revolutionary successors. That examination is the principal object of this section and the next…

… Normal research, which is cumulative, owes its success to the ability of scientists regularly to select problems that can be solved with conceptual and instrumental techniques close to those already in existence. (That is why an excessive concern with useful problems, regardless of their relation to existing knowledge and technique, can so easily inhibit scientific development.) The man who is striving to solve a problem defined by existing knowledge and technique is not, however, just looking around. He knows what he wants to achieve, and he designs his instruments and directs his thoughts accordingly. Unanticipated novelty, the new discovery, can emerge only to the extent that his anticipations about nature and his instruments prove wrong. Often the importance of the resulting discovery will itself be proportional to the extent and stubbornness of the anomaly that foreshadowed it. Obviously, then, there must be a conflict between the paradigm that discloses anomaly and the one that later renders the anomaly lawlike.