How we decide

How we decide whom we shall vote for: Andrew Tyndall, a media analyst based in the US, monitors American broadcast news media at his website the Tyndall Report. He found that the overwhelming majority of the time spent by the US media in coverage of the run-up to last November's presidential election was spent on coverage of (1) the candidates and (2) polling.What about policy issues?

With just two weeks to go, issues coverage this year has been virtually non-existent. Of the 32 minutes total, terrorism (17 mins) and foreign policy (7 mins) towards the Middle East (Israel-ISIS-Syria-Iraq) have attracted some attention. Gay rights, immigration and policing have been mentioned in passing. No trade, no healthcare, no climate change, no drugs, no poverty, no guns, no infrastructure, no deficits. To the extent that these issues have been mentioned, it has been on the candidates' terms, not on the networks' initiative. Andrew Tyndall, 25 October 2016

From my viewpoint, it doesn't really matter whether we, the public, are more interested in personalities and opinion polls than issues, or whether the almost total absence of policy discussion reflects the preferences of the mainstream media. The important point is that we do not, as a society, debate the outcomes we want to see. Policymaking in all the democracies, not just the US, has become so obscurantist as to become inaccessible to all except those who are paid to follow it. All that's left for the rest of us is to discuss the personality flaws of the candidates, and how people react to them. It's not an edifying spectacle, nor is it one that makes for social cohesion. Powerful interests, with much at stake and resources to match, follow policymaking and influence it in their favour. We have, then, on the one hand government and big business (which these days includes much of academia) and on the other, ordinary people and small businesses. The gap between the two is already wide, and appears to be growing wider.

Social Policy Bonds could change that. They are focused entirely on the social and environmental outcomes we wish to see. 'We' meaning all society; not just policy wonks, ideologues and public- and private-sector interest groups. Social outcomes, under a bond regime, would be agreed and targeted for improvement. There's more consensus over such outcomes and the direction in which we want to move, than there is about the supposed ways of achieving them, or who we think will be better at achieving them - even when outcomes are actually under discussion which, as we see, is very seldom. And there's certainly more comprehension about what outcomes are than about the arcana that are such a feature of our current policymaking process. Of course, even under a bond regime, there would be disagreements about the priorities people would give to different goals but, importantly, even those whose strong opinions would be over-ridden, would have been consulted. More generally, with greater public participation in the policymaking process, there would be more buy-in - an essential feature that is largely absent from today's politics.

"How we decide" today is a risible process; one that is divisive and distracting. As a result "what we decide" is far removed from the concerns of ordinary people. Social Policy Bonds targeting broad, meaningful goals, would be a big improvement.