Issue (WIWE) status: Submitted, Unpublished

Weak Signal's progress: Advanced

This Weak Signal came from: 
History/Past event

The source of this Weak Signal: 
Peter W. Galbraith, Unintended Consequences: How War in Iraq Strengthened America’s Enemies (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008); Robert Merton, "The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action," American Sociological Review 1:6 (1936), 894-904; Jon Perr, "Cheney Defends the 'Nobody Could've Predicted' President," Crooks and Liars (11 January 2009), online at http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/cheney-defends-nobody-couldve-predicted-p.

When did the Weak Signal manifest ? 
2005-now

Weak Signal's description: 

Unintended consequences seem to plague our best efforts to plan these days. Financial writer Shishir Nigam declared in mid-2010 that "one of the biggest themes in this current investment environment and in the next few years will be the dominance of unintended consequences - an environment where the unintended consequences of actions will speak much louder than the intended actions themselves." Indeed, a growing number of leaders excuse their failures by invoking unintended consequences-- a development that has troubling implications for the way we make policy and decisions.