Explaining Political Judgement

Perri 6 is Professor of Social Policy in the Graduate School of the College of Business, Law and Social Sciences at Nottingham Trent University. He worked previously at the University of Birmingham, King's College London, the University of Strathclyde and the University of Bath. His recent books include Principles of Research Design (2011, with C. Bellamy), Paradoxes of Modernisation: Unintended Consequences of Public Policy Reform (2010, edited with H. Margetts and C. Hood), The Institutional Dynamics of Culture: The New Durkheimians, Volumes I and II (2008, edited with G. Mars), Public Emotions (2007, edited with S. Radstone, C. Squire and A. Treacher) Beyond Delivery: Policy Implementation as Sense-Making and Settlement (2006, with E. Peck), Managing Networks of Twenty First Century Organisations (2006, with N. Goodwin, E. Peck and T. Freeman) and E-Governance: Styles of Political Judgment in the Information Age Polity (2004). He currently holds a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship which supports his research on unintended and unanticipated consequences of political judgement styles in British government, 1959–74.

'Drawing upon neo-Durkheimian social anthropology, Perri 6 demonstrates the profound relevance of social and institutional context to an old issue (political judgment) in a familiar historical case (the Cuban Missile Crisis). This bold, refreshing, deeply fascinating cross-disciplinary foray challenges us to rethink our understandings of both.' David A. Welch, CIGI Chair of Global Security, Balsillie School of International Affairs

• 1. On political judgement; 2. The need for richer explanation; 3. A Durkheimian theoretical framework; 4. October 1962, before and after; 5. The Khrushchev régime; 6. The Kennedy administration; 7. The Castro revolutionary régime; 8. Implications; 9. Coda.