I.
What are the problems?
The details vary from country to country, though not by much. . . All are caused by a latent policy of austerity, resulting in a failure to invest in public goods. These are, in no particular order: stagnant growth, under which any structural change takes on a zero-sum character; the deterioration of public infrastructure, including railways, bridges and roads; a growing housing shortage and rising urban rents; the failure to adapt both cities and rural areas to the consequences of climate change; the lack of an immigration policy to counterbalance an ageing population alongside a sharp decline in birth rates; the decay of the education system, particularly primary schools; the indebtedness of local authorities and their diminishing ability to make necessary investments and provide essential services; growing inequality in income and wealth, with low-income families – particularly those headed by single mothers – chronically the worst hit; and, last but not least, widespread anxiety about the future, driven in part by fear of cuts to state-provided essential services that are becoming increasingly hard to finance.
What’s to be done?
Above all, questions must be asked – particularly by the left – in front of an audience who, contrary to the advice of PR ‘experts’, we must still regard as capable of reason if democracy is to continue to exist. How do we get capital to foot the bill for the costs it imposes on society and nature? How do we prevent tax avoidance and tax evasion? How do we protect companies that provide good-quality work for the people in our country from a global trade system that shows no regard for working people? How can we halt the decline in our population, through immigration as well as through better family policies? How do we relieve our local administrations of their debt burdens, to allow them to provide the public services that are indispensable for a good life for all in a society in transition such as ours? And how must ‘our democracy’ be restructured so that it can be a democracy for all and give its citizens the opportunity to take control of their own lives, rather than having to beg for help from a state whose coffers are empty and will remain so for a long time to come?
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/who-will-pay?pc=1789
That’s it? Really? I mean, is this even good enough? Surely, more useful things can be said, even when, as I believe, the above is true as far as it goes.
II.
Quietism of despair would have been one 1950s’ reaction. Calls for capital-T transformations are, however, common these days: economic, political, global, planetary, interpersonal, behavioral, ecological, ontological, epistemological, normative–whatever, it’s got to be capital-T. These Big Changes are all urgent, even more so because the details of implementation and operation are, well, unclear.
A more useful first response, I argue, is to accept the challenge of recasting the above “What are the problems?” and “What’s to be done?”
I’m quite willing to believe that under dystopian narratives, it’s too late, what happens next will be worse, and anyway it’s all overtaken by bad politics, follow-the-dollar, and the jerks in charge. I’m unwilling to accept that proposition, though, without first analyzing the preconditions for and ways then to undertake recasting. Why? Because the assumption of intractability stops short of the multiple interpretations that the complexities of policy and management open up for reframing, redescribing, revising, reorienting, and repurposing.
III
Frankly, you must wonder why so many people believe they sit on analytic perches above it all from which they can peer, prognosticate and puppeteer problems and solutions all the way down. Speaking for myself, I’m in the middle of fragments that are at best candidates for “problems,” as if I’m reading a book’s index, the only thing left behind from a multi-volume text that has since disappeared, or never existed. It’s natural to make connections between and among the entry terms in front of you and me, though where apophenia begins (if at all) is not clear.
A 1950s reaction as well? Perhaps; arguably more so since mysteries over connections are (for me) a clear adjunct to uncertainty, and mystery is not something Anthropocene uncertainty cultivates. Rather, policy analysts like myself are left with a (faux?) familiarity that feels more like scrapbooks, plaster cast replicas, and rehanging old museum walls. Policy analysis and public management as first a curation of fragments before the recomposition(s)?
NB. For examples of the kind of recastings called for please see When Complex is as Simple as it Gets: Guide for recasting policy and management in the Anthropocene (Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, 2023) https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/18008
WHEN COMPLEX IS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS 