In this light, works like that of Falch (1973)
tell us nothing about why a particular polity exhibits particular
policy conditions. It is as if the choice of language policies
was totally random, from `off the shelf', as it were,
without any relationship to the historical, social, cultural,
educational, religious conditions extant in a particular area.
There may indeed be such an appearance of randomness in certain
polities--certainly there have been autocratic rulers and
megalomaniacs who made single-minded decisions, but even so, we
can demonstrate that such autocrats are usually the products of
their own culture; they are deeply embedded in some sort of
cultural tradition. This is not, of course, to attempt to excuse
these behaviors, or offer some kind of ``cultural defense" but rather
to try to get at the cultural conditions that spawn these beliefs, instead
of simply dismissing them as misguided.