When government discovers that talking about a problem can become a permanent alternative to solving it
We have written about the Word Salad Bar, that remarkable establishment where governments serve generous portions of recognition, commitment, collaboration and continuing engagement, accompanied by very little that anyone can actually measure.
But we left a question unanswered.
Why does the government Word Salad Bar never close?
We understand why governments sometimes resort to evasive language. They want to avoid an awkward commitment, reassure an unhappy constituency, postpone an expensive decision or keep several groups reasonably content. These are familiar political manoeuvres. They have probably existed for as long as governments have.
What is harder to explain is their permanence.
A government recognizes a problem. It consults. It develops a strategy. It announces an action plan. It establishes a framework. It reports on progress. Then, several years later, it recognizes the same problem and begins again.
At some point, we ought to stop asking why government has failed to complete the process and consider whether the process is doing exactly what the institution intended.
Perhaps the process is not broken. Perhaps it has become the product.
When words become an output
Organizational theorist Nils Brunsson developed a concept called organized hypocrisy. It sounds like an accusation of dishonesty, but the idea is more interesting than that.
Organizations are often expected to satisfy demands that cannot easily be reconciled. Governments must demonstrate compassion while controlling expenditures. They must promise simplicity while protecting complicated administrative systems. They must encourage independence while maintaining rules that can make independence difficult.
One response is to separate what an organization says, what it decides and what it does.
The language satisfies one set of expectations. The formal decision satisfies another. Actual operations continue according to still another set of pressures.
This helps explain a familiar feature of social policy.
A government can express an unwavering commitment to reducing poverty while leaving a social assistance rate unchanged. It can celebrate the dignity of people with disabilities while retaining administrative practices that make their lives unnecessarily difficult. It can promise to remove barriers without identifying which barriers it will remove, when, or at whose expense.
The words are not necessarily intended as lies. They perform a different function.
They allow the institution to demonstrate that it possesses the correct values without requiring it to reconcile those values with its operations.
And because demonstrating the correct values is itself rewarded, there is little reason for the language to disappear.
The strange success of an unsuccessful strategy
Sociologists John Meyer and Brian Rowan offered another useful concept: decoupling.
Organizations adopt policies, structures and procedures partly because these are recognized signs of legitimacy. A responsible organization is expected to have a strategy, a consultation process, performance indicators and a framework for accountability.
Having these things demonstrates that the organization is behaving properly.
Whether they substantially change what happens on the ground can become a separate question.
Consider a government poverty strategy.
It may establish advisory bodies, consult people with lived experience, publish indicators, commission research and produce annual progress reports. All these activities can be worthwhile.
But suppose the central benefit remains inadequate throughout the life of the strategy.
Has the strategy failed?
From the perspective of someone trying to live on that benefit, certainly.
From the perspective of the organization, however, the strategy may have delivered something valuable: evidence that the government recognizes the problem, takes it seriously, engages stakeholders and has an established process for responding.
This is the uncomfortable possibility.
A policy process can succeed institutionally while failing the people it was created to help.
The longer it continues, the more difficult that distinction becomes to see.
The strategy acquires a staff, a budget, a reporting cycle, advisory relationships and institutional supporters. People invest time and professional reputations in making it work.
Eventually, ending the process may appear more disruptive than continuing it, even if the original problem remains substantially unchanged.
Consultation can become a form of non-decision
Political scientists Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz argued that power is exercised not only through decisions but also through keeping certain questions from becoming decisions.
This offers another explanation for perpetual consultation.
Suppose advocates ask government to increase an inadequate benefit.
Government replies that it recognizes the concern and will consult on the broader challenges of income security.
The question has changed.
It is no longer simply whether the benefit should increase, by how much and when. It is now a question about the scope of a consultation, the composition of an advisory group, the design of a framework and the timetable for further engagement.
The original demand has not been rejected.
But neither has it been answered.
And because it has not been rejected, advocates may find themselves obliged to participate. Refusing to participate risks losing influence. Participating lends credibility to a process that may never produce the decision they sought.
This is not necessarily a carefully designed trap. It can emerge from the ordinary incentives of government and advocacy organizations alike.
Government wants evidence of engagement. Advocacy organizations want access. Officials want manageable processes. Everyone can demonstrate that they are doing something.
Meanwhile, the original decision remains somewhere beyond the next meeting.
The problem with endless good intentions
There is a temptation to explain all this by accusing governments of cynicism. Sometimes cynicism is undoubtedly present. But that explanation is insufficient.
Many public servants sincerely want better outcomes. Ministers may genuinely believe in the values expressed in their announcements. Advisory committee members may work extraordinarily hard.
That is precisely why the phenomenon deserves attention. If everyone involved can be sincere, conscientious and busy, yet the underlying problem persists, then the explanation cannot rest entirely on individual intentions.
We have to examine the machinery.
We have built systems that reward evidence of activity more readily than evidence of improvement.
A consultation can be counted. A strategy can be published. A committee can be established. A report can be delivered on schedule.
The absence of poverty, by contrast, is much harder to manufacture through administrative activity.
More importantly, reducing poverty may require decisions that create winners and losers, reallocate resources or challenge longstanding assumptions. It is easier to obtain agreement on the importance of dignity than on the expenditure required to make dignity possible.
So, the institution continues producing what it can produce with relatively little conflict: language, process and assurances.
Over time, these become normalized. A new minister inherits the framework. A new advisory committee revisits the priorities. A new strategy incorporates the findings of the old strategy.
Nobody needs to decide that nothing will change.
Nothing changing can become the cumulative result of everybody following the process.
The role of advocacy
There is an uncomfortable implication for organizations like ours.
Advocates can become participants in the very system they criticize.
We attend consultations because we want government to hear us. We contribute to strategies because we hope they will improve. We comment on reports because inaccurate reports should be corrected.
These are reasonable choices. But when a process continues indefinitely, participation can begin to substitute for influence.
An advocacy organization may report that it attended 20 meetings, submitted six briefs and participated in three advisory committees.
Government can report exactly the same activities as evidence of meaningful engagement.
Neither account necessarily tells us whether anything improved.
This is not an argument for abandoning consultation. It is an argument for becoming more demanding about what consultation is supposed to accomplish.
Before participating, we should be able to identify the decision being considered, who has authority to make it, when it will be made and what evidence will establish whether the resulting policy worked.
Otherwise, we may simply be helping government prepare the next menu.
How to close the bar
The answer is not to prohibit reassuring language. Governments need to explain their intentions, acknowledge uncertainty and maintain public trust. Nor should every promise be converted immediately into an expenditure. There are genuine fiscal constraints, competing priorities and difficult policy choices.
But those constraints should be stated rather than concealed beneath a permanent commitment to further engagement.
If government decides that a benefit will not increase, it should explain why. If it intends to increase the benefit later, it should identify the conditions and timetable. If a strategy is intended to improve an outcome, it should establish a baseline, measurable objectives and a date at which results will be assessed.
And if repeated consultations have not produced change, the next question should not automatically be whom else to consult. It should be why the earlier consultations did not lead to a decision.
Perhaps the most important change is to stop treating statements of concern as evidence of progress.
Recognition is not an outcome. Engagement is not an outcome. A framework is not an outcome. Even a completed action plan is not necessarily an outcome.
These things may help produce results. They should never be confused with the results themselves.
The Word Salad Bar remains open because it meets a real institutional demand. It enables government to display responsiveness, manage conflicting expectations and maintain legitimacy without always confronting the difficult choices that meaningful change requires.
That makes it much more than a collection of irritating phrases.
It is a way of governing. And the danger is not simply that government will continue talking while problems remain unsolved.
It is that, after enough years of talking, we may forget that solving the problems was the reason for the conversation in the first place.
John Stapleton and Sarah Bondy – aided by commentary from Trevor Manson