Evidence-based policy making: it all comes down to fear vs. hope
What does evidence-based policy making have to do with the politics of hope and fear? More than you might think. The recent campaign battle between Justin Trudeau and Stephen Harper offers a glimpse into a major shift in policymaking now underway in governments around the world.
Throughout history, reliable evidence has been in short supply on most issues. Policymakers tended to fill the gaps with makeshift principles, anecdotal evidence, speculation, religious doctrine or ideology. As a result, history is filled with bad policy.
That could be about to change. For the first time, governments have—or soon will have—a super-abundance of data and information that could usher in an era of enlightened governance.
Consider the Green Revolution of the 1950s. By letting science guide policy, governments tripled global food output in a decade. The challenge now is to extend this revolution to economics and social policy—and that shifts attention off hard science and onto the soft ground of human behaviour.
Humans are “intentional” creatures, which is to say that we form ideas and plans that we can then choose to act on. The social and psychological conditions involved can be devilishly complex.
Nevertheless, through the magic of Big Data governments’ ability to use policy to shape public behaviour is growing by leaps and bounds. And that is where fear and hope come in.
Fear is a primordial emotion that easily overwhelms our capacity for intentional action and, in its place, triggers instinctive responses. Thus, when people are scared, they tend to run first and think later.
Hope is a different kind of experience. It is “aspirational” in the sense that it combines emotion with intentional action. It not only calls on us to imagine a situation that is better than the present one, but to recognize that we are instrumental in realizing it. It empowers us by challenging us to make a plan and seize control of our future.
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