Political will is the magic ingredient of human commitment to a cause which makes things work or make things happen. Without it there is stagnation or, at least, inaction, as expressed in such statements as: "What is missing is political will at the top"; "Lack of political will created difficult obstacles to economic integration"; "It's not a technical problem, it's only a question of political will".
As social and technological innovation increase, it becomes harder to implement changes and catch up. For a country this means that economic, epistemological and organizational sustainability become a question of continuing transformation in a fast-changing world. But what has proved successful as a model in the past then creates inertia within that system, eliciting an unwillingness to change since change is perceived as disrupting what works, whether institutionalized educational patterns or the power and economic privileges of those who emerged through that model and have an investment in the current status. The best adapted and most successful countries then experience the greatest difficulty in adapting and retaining their comparative advantages.
The problem is not lack of laws to care for human rights. The problem is a lack of political will by governments, their silence and their inability to control their own security forces.
Usually, it is the political commitment of a nation's leadership which can mobilize a whole society, procure the necessary resources, coordinate supply and demand, and put the weight of permanent government services behind a sustained national effort. Although there are outstanding examples of such commitment, it must be said that the political will to act on behalf of the poor and the vulnerable is not always evident. The weakness, indeed sometimes the lack, of commitment among ruling elites to the well-being of the majority has been and still is a major obstacle to development in many areas.