How foresight can help persistent public policy failures

I was invited last week to speak about effective inclusion – a subject that many have worked on for long with mixed results - and I felt it is essential to write a short article on why futures is imperative in fostering participation and inclusion in the public policymaking process. Policymaking is the mechanism through which the government identifies a public problem and puts a framework to address it. It is assumed that once the policy is implemented, the quality of life of the citizen will improve – mainly through laws and regulations that facilitate addressing the issue or through funding towards the achievement of the goals intended by the policy. Traditional policymaking is linear and includes identifying the problem & framing it, policy formulation, policy adoption, policy implementation, and policy evaluation. The process, in my view, is counterproductive at many levels, hence the need to infuse futures thinking. This is why.

 

At the identification of the problem & framing stage, the challenges are often identified from incidences that have occurred. There is usually little analysis of the root causes of the problems or their function within the whole system. Interestingly is also the fact that policy development is made to address the current problem in the future, but seldom is there any thinking that goes into how the issue will evolve in the future. The lack of analysis at this systemic and futures level makes people have single-sided definitions of the problem instead of the holistic view in which issues could be looked at – making it essential to ask, whose definition is adopted when a policy is crafted? On many occasions, the official policy then ends up being biased and mainstreaming stereotypes that keep policymakers locked inside obsolete assumptions that continue to surface long after the policy is done. 

 

The policy formulation stage entails designing an approach to solving the problem. While lobbyists might be successful in getting progressive suggestions to politicians, the threat of political interpretation and the vicious fight by conservative forces to maintain the status quo gets in the way of what should be objectively done about the issue or how to address changing circumstances. It is also important to note that politicians are trying to resolve a problem they may not personally experience while living in their ivory towers – so in essence, they are not the wearers of the shoe. That is why policy proposals are sometimes so abstract and thus impractical. At the adoption level, it is usually the same politicians, with many vested interests and selfish ends, deciding the legitimacy of the policy. It is a no brainer that the public good is most times sacrificed for short-term expediency. There are incidences where good policies make it to the implementation stage, but the bureaucratic nature of government institutions makes execution slow or obstructed by lack of funds, misappropriation of resources, ethnicization, elite & other captures, among many other challenges. Monitoring and evaluation to check if the policy was successful in resolving the issue is rarely done. Even when we manage to tick the boxes, it is the executor of the service that checks themselves, which makes it hard to be objective. 

 

So how might foresight help?

Policy challenges are much more complex and must be treated as such. Comprehensive research (without political manipulation of data) into the state of affairs, which considers past and present systemic evolutions, can establish the facts impartially. Honest multi-stakeholder views with very diverse groups (not those stage-managed political gimmicks) to ensure honest feedback on the issue, correct biases, and to understand intersectional impacts are crucial to foster empathy, inclusion, buy-in, collaboration, as well as to generate trust. Both the quantitative and qualitative data are necessary to complement each other and, in a sense, complete the analysis loop.

 

Due to the volatile, uncertain, rapidly changing, and ambiguous context within which the policy issues to be addressed occur, it is imperative to understand the possible future evolutions. This is where a combination of futures methods like trends analysis, scenarios building, horizon scanning, etc. all play a part in simulating long term probable outcomes. This kind of analysis helps design strategic responses and anticipate behavioral incentives and tradeoffs required for successful intervention and creating the necessary changes. Policymakers even get the advantage of genuinely co-creating solutions with the affected populations and in realistic ways – which demolishes the traditional top-down approach to policymaking and appreciates the context-based location of those impacted by the issue. 

 

Based on the two previous processes, policy adoption and legitimization is therefore predicated on the basis of genuinely making the most strategic decision in terms of cost-benefit analysis, public good, and authentic change or results. The collaborative nature of the process can enable the loosening of self-preserving tendencies among institutions because of the trust created with stakeholders. The government can be free to create an enabling environment where other actors step in to take their space. They can efficiently work together because of the elaborate process that fosters the creation of policy ownership and still keep each other accountable because of very clearly stipulated expectations. It is also possible to collect feedback to the most granular levels and from multiple angles because of the multiplicity of actors enabled to participate in the policy implementation process. 

 

Of course, issues of time to do such a laborious process, the political will or mandate, as well as the culture clash between politicians, bureaucrats, and organizations or ordinary citizens, are often cited as reasons why this process is impossible. However, the benefits far outweigh the constant tragedy of the effects of bad policies, and an ineffective policymaking process.