Roland Monsegu · Author
Who decides?
Two books, one question: who decides, and who pays the price if they are wrong?
English edition
The End of Decision
Why Modern Politics Replaced Judgement with Management
We have never had so many rules, and so few decisions.
Modern politics has replaced judgement with management, decision with process, and responsibility with a mille-feuille of committees, until no one can say I decided this.
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Planning permission for one road ran to 359,000 pages and took sixteen years. A railway lost its northern half and still tripled its budget. A hospital met its targets while its patients went unwashed. Each time, everyone followed procedure, and no one was responsible.
This is not a story of bad people or the wrong ideology. It is a story of design. Modern politics has replaced judgement with management, decision with process, and responsibility with a mille-feuille of committees, frameworks and reviews, layer upon layer, until no one can say I decided this.
The End of Decision explains how it happened, and why the usual escapes make it worse:
- why bureaucracies turn moral when they stop deciding
- why “temporary” measures never go away
- why Marxism, technocracy, populism and purity politics all fail the same test
- why strong leaders need fewer brakes on acting, and strong brakes on staying
Short, sharp and deliberately provocative, this book takes no party’s side. It takes aim at the whole system, including your camp.
Before you vote again, ask the only question that matters: who decides, and who pays the price if they are wrong?
Édition française
Circulez, il n’y a rien à décider
Pourquoi la politique moderne a remplacé le jugement par le management
Jamais autant de règles. Jamais si peu de décisions.
Les comités se multiplient, les procédures s’empilent, les évaluations s’enchaînent. Et à la fin, plus personne ne peut dire j’ai décidé.
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Avant de voter à nouveau, posez la seule question qui compte : qui décide, et qui paie s’il se trompe ?
About Roland Monsegu
Roland Monsegu has spent thirty years travelling through most of the world’s countries, across Asia, Europe, the Americas and the Middle East. He moved between liberal democracies and dictatorships, reading, talking to people and watching each system at work up close. What struck him was not how different they were, but what they shared: power that answered to no one, and people unhappy with the result.
That puzzle became The End of Decision. It does not promise a neat fix. It points in a direction, and makes an argument he hopes readers will take up, test and push back against. The French edition, Circulez, il n’y a rien à décider, is rewritten for French readers, with French examples.
Roland lives and works between Ireland and France, where he runs his own businesses. He works in English, French and Spanish.