Public servants always talk about the “value added”; it’s time to add some values.
Economic impact estimates. Cost-benefit analyses. The t-test. In addition to being dreadful topics to bring up on a first date, these are the bread-and-butter tools of policy analysts. We count the costs, summarize the benefits, and make policy recommendations on these grounds. When we talk about trade-offs, it’s usually between rational and quantifiable goods: growth vs. equity; small benefits to many vs. major losses to few; cost vs. effectiveness. Having collected information and having made our recommendations, we then punt the final decision to elected representatives, who are responsible for selecting the correct approach in line with the public interest.
No doubt, this system has led to major successes, as evidenced by the good governance of the Canadian public service. Politically motivated hysterics aside, the Canadian government works, and the same can’t be said about many governments around the world. The high-quality analysis of the Canadian public service deserves plenty of credit for the country’s flourishing over the past century-and-a-half. I would never suggest that these methods should be abandoned.
However, the public service struggles to account for seemingly irrational responses to policy choices. Witness the considerable number of eligible Canadians that remain unvaccinated, despite the demonstrated safety of vaccines, the severe health risks associated with COVID-19, and massive public education campaigns to publicize these facts. Look at the continued popularity of inefficient (in a purely cost-benefit sense) policies like crushingly long prison sentences or highly restrictive rent control. To the technocrat (as many public servants are), people who support these policies are simply wrong. The evidence has been collected, analyzed, and peer reviewed. The results are in, and these policies are ineffective.
So why do so many people persist in holding ‘incorrect’ ideas?
There is an explanation that has become de rigueur of late – an explanation which revolves around insufficient and inaccurate information (i.e., ignorance, idiocy, and fake news). If this explanation is accepted, the remedy is education. If we show people the evidence, we would be able to dispel myths and blast through entrenched interests, and ultimately implement a set of policies that maximize human well-being based on facts and data (respecting that some trade-offs cannot be avoided).
This view is false.
There’s nothing fundamentally “irrational” about vaccine hesitancy, tough-on-crime policies, or strict rent control. They certainly don’t “work” in a technocratic sense: vaccine hesitancy leads to more death, long prison sentences are expensive for taxpayers and don’t deter crime, and strict rent control reduces the quality and quantity of available housing in aggregate.
However, I’d submit that advocates for such “irrational” policies are not primarily being led by false evidence. Instead, they are being led by their consciences, by their values, by the feeling in the pit of their stomachs that guides moral compasses. Values are fundamental to our identities, sometimes trumping economic interests, social ties, self-preservation, and, indeed, the facts. Many Nobel Peace Prizes have been awarded to individuals who fully lived through their values, even when rational actors would have given up. In the face-off between facts and values, hard evidence can certainly influence opinions, but it is unlikely to be sufficient in all (or even most) cases.
In the day-to-day work of a Canadian public servant, scant attention is paid to the confluence of values and policymaking, despite the central role values play in our lives. In one sense, this is reasonable: as individuals who pride themselves on their non-partisanship, public servants get uncomfortable when they are asked to weigh in on values. “As a good public servant, I don’t have an opinion on anything” is a common refrain heard in downtown Ottawa (and rightfully so). We then conclude that values are best left to activists, politicians, and the Canadian public. If a government with a certain set of values is elected, the public service will faithfully implement their agenda. That’s not just a nice idea; it is the duty of the public service.
However, we don’t have to take such an extreme position. It is an objective fact that Canadians are guided by differing values. Discussions of values can appear sensitive and politically tinged, but the same could be said about analysis of the interaction between gender identity and policy. And yet the public service is willing to conduct a Gender-Based Analysis on every Memorandum to Cabinet. Furthermore, we’re duty-bound to be non-political, but there is a parliamentary affairs branch in every single department that provides the Government advice on Opposition views and strategy. By restricting our advice to factual matters, the public service has demonstrated its ability to dip its toes into sensitive topics without turning into an organization of activists. Why can’t we do the same thing with values, moral or otherwise?
In my assessment, public service remains blind to the importance of “irrational” values at its own risk. Our policymaking suffers because it does not systematically account for predictable emotional reactions from the public. I hope this website will be the remedy.
What This Website Is
The articles on this site will develop values analysis, a policy-making tool that outlines:
- the values that are operational in a given policy problem;
- how policy solutions either violate or harmonize with said values; and
- how the negative public reaction to violated values could undermine a policy’s success.
The goals of values analysis are two-fold: to maximize value harmonization and minimize value violation to make policy work better, and to present more accurate sets of trade-offs to elected representatives to enable a fuller discussion of the issues at play.
When reading the articles on this site, please keep the following in mind:
This website is focused on the practical. I am not a philosopher nor a psychologist, so this is not the place to discuss the finer points of ethical theories or moral psychology. No doubt, I will briefly draw on these schools of thought (particularly the moral foundations theory) to make my points, but don’t expect long bibliographies filled with peer-reviewed articles splitting hairs on the merits of utilitarianism vs. deontological ethics. If that’s what you are looking for, you won’t find it here.
This website is non-partisan. I am not here to advocate for my values, nor am I here to pressure the public service into taking a harder line on the moral justifications of government policies. Let me be explicit: in a democratic society, only elected representatives have the authority to select between competing values, and the public service has a duty to defer to elected representatives in this regard. However, this does not mean that the public service cannot meaningfully describe the values (moral, ethical, or otherwise) that underpin policies, if only to help elected representatives make informed decisions.
This website is a work in progress. Values analysis is not a fully cooked policy tool ready for implementation. Rather, it is the result of personal interest and serious reservations about some of the analysis the public service produces. I am not an expert on policymaking, and I won’t pretend to be. I encourage all readers (if there are any) to comment on my articles and open a discussion on these issues. I have no doubt I’ll publish a few duds.
This website is basically safe for work. Any discussion of moral and ethical values can easily slip into dark material. I’ll seek to avoid this, but some values can’t be fully explored without eliciting a strong negative reaction. As a result, this website is rated PG-13. However, whenever there are two possible examples, one rated 14-A and one rated R, I’ll select the more family-friendly version. Feel free to open this website on your work computer.
A Call to Arms
If you want to read more, go here for a quick description of moral foundations theory, a fascinating idea in the domain of psychology that will form the basis for many future articles. Then, go here for my first attempt at applying values analysis to the recent decisions of the Government of Alberta regarding vaccine passports. If these articles resonate with you, consider signing up of my mailing list on the right side of this page. I plan to post a new article on this website at 9:00 AM EST every Tuesday. Stay tuned!