Political will is defined by means-end capacity, not by its goal.

Evidence

In the internal relations of a State, the situation is incomparably more favourable to central initiative, to what Machiavelli understood as a will to command. … Political science abstracts the element “will”, and does not take account of the end to which a particular will is applied. The attribute’ ‘utopian” does not apply to political will in general, but to specific wills which are incapable of relating means to end, and hence are not even wills, but idle whims, dreams, longings, etc. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 734

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines political will as a means-end capacity rather than a quality tied to the will’s goal.
• XREF: Connects to Gramsci’s broader machinery of hegemony and the distinction between will and mere aspiration — relevant scaffolding for how marginal groups’ demands get dismissed as ‘utopian’ in later Islamophobia readings. — connects to: Public law mostly channels the means of politics rather than dictating its ends. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 530