I liked your box that gave concrete advice on how to improve policy suggestions. A lot of people spend a lot of time and energy focusing on what doesn’t work, and it’s nice to see some focus on what does work.
Have you put any thought in how to overcome the sorts of political obstacles that cause politicians to favor certain interest groups at the expense of a greater good (such as some agricultural subsidies)?
[W]e found it easier than expected to gain access to policymakers, and thus when we have more politically feasible responses to problems and more support for them, we think it will be possible for us to take these to policymakers.
That’s great news! I had previously assumed that political action in this area would be infeasible, but I’m happy to be wrong on this one.
Have you put any thought in how to overcome the sorts of political obstacles that cause politicians to favor certain interest groups at the expense of a greater good (such as some agricultural subsidies)?
I find the ‘political entrepreneur’ model useful here. It predicts that a politician would be willing to make changes to these sorts of policies once the balance of costs to them and benefits to them weighs in favour of changing it.
For example, take the common agricultural policy in the EU. If you change it, then you have 26m very angry European farmers, and large scale unemployment that you are labelled as responsible for. So the politician would need to create a mass movement or economic benefits that are clearly greater than these downsides in order for it to go through. Unfortunately people make much more noise about losses than about benefits, and so this is unlikely to change anytime soon.
Of course the political entrepreneur model is very simplistic here. It would take a huge coalition of politicians to make this happen. And you would need to get around all of the nationalistic worries that would occur from vast quantities of the EU budget not being allocated to countries that it had previously been allocated to. These are just a few of the many additional obstacles that would need to be overcome.
There is much more to be said about this though. A rather non-evidence-based playbook on this that I used to use in my campaigning days is “How to win campaigns” by Chris Rose if you are interested in reading more about how to do this practically. On the more theoretical side, many of the books linked to in the article propose alternative models that can help illustrate the sorts of changes that would need to be made.
I find the ‘political entrepreneur’ model useful here. It predicts that a politician would be willing to make changes to these sorts of policies once the balance of costs to them and benefits to them weighs in favour of changing it.
Perhaps this is a case where the best way to change public policy is to change public sentiment → create a large enough political benefit to outweigh the special interests cost.
I think this will tend to be correct when the policy involves large costs as well as gains to society. For some of the policies we’re interested in that could be right; some of them shouldn’t need that.
I had previously assumed that political action in this area would be infeasible, but I’m happy to be wrong on this one.
To clarify, I’m not predicting that political action will be feasible. I’m merely predicting that it will be possible for us to gain access to policymakers again in the future. Especially once we have better responses and policy proposals.
I liked your box that gave concrete advice on how to improve policy suggestions. A lot of people spend a lot of time and energy focusing on what doesn’t work, and it’s nice to see some focus on what does work.
Have you put any thought in how to overcome the sorts of political obstacles that cause politicians to favor certain interest groups at the expense of a greater good (such as some agricultural subsidies)?
That’s great news! I had previously assumed that political action in this area would be infeasible, but I’m happy to be wrong on this one.
I find the ‘political entrepreneur’ model useful here. It predicts that a politician would be willing to make changes to these sorts of policies once the balance of costs to them and benefits to them weighs in favour of changing it.
For example, take the common agricultural policy in the EU. If you change it, then you have 26m very angry European farmers, and large scale unemployment that you are labelled as responsible for. So the politician would need to create a mass movement or economic benefits that are clearly greater than these downsides in order for it to go through. Unfortunately people make much more noise about losses than about benefits, and so this is unlikely to change anytime soon.
Of course the political entrepreneur model is very simplistic here. It would take a huge coalition of politicians to make this happen. And you would need to get around all of the nationalistic worries that would occur from vast quantities of the EU budget not being allocated to countries that it had previously been allocated to. These are just a few of the many additional obstacles that would need to be overcome.
There is much more to be said about this though. A rather non-evidence-based playbook on this that I used to use in my campaigning days is “How to win campaigns” by Chris Rose if you are interested in reading more about how to do this practically. On the more theoretical side, many of the books linked to in the article propose alternative models that can help illustrate the sorts of changes that would need to be made.
Perhaps this is a case where the best way to change public policy is to change public sentiment → create a large enough political benefit to outweigh the special interests cost.
I think this will tend to be correct when the policy involves large costs as well as gains to society. For some of the policies we’re interested in that could be right; some of them shouldn’t need that.
To clarify, I’m not predicting that political action will be feasible. I’m merely predicting that it will be possible for us to gain access to policymakers again in the future. Especially once we have better responses and policy proposals.