Is a week a long time in politics anymore?

The way we think about time is changing – which has behavioural implications that need to be examined

One of the widely understood realities about politics in many countries is known as the ‘Doom Loop’, the way that policy makers repeatedly prioritise short-term issues in public services at the expense of difficult decisions that would benefit services in the long run. As the UK’s Institute for Government points out, this means perpetual crises focus government attention on getting through the next news cycle, rather than prudent longer-term thinking.

Enter Mission Government, which, as the newly installed Labour Government in the UK put it, means deciding the big challenges that government should focus on and then using all the tools at their disposal to try to solve them. The aim is to end ‘short-term sticking plaster politics’. The ambition is drawn from the sense of mission that accompanied the Apollo programme, a ‘moonshot’ at the time that relied on ambitious goals to galvanize innovation and drive collaboration across sectors.

And the UK is not alone - governments around the world are increasingly adopting mission-oriented approaches to tackle complex societal challenges. leveraging collaboration with citizens and business to address long-term goals. Examples include the EU with the Horizon Europe, a €100 billion programme that aims to solve big challenges such as climate change and digital transformation. Germany has implemented mission-oriented policies particularly in the realm of environmental sustainability; the Energiewende (Energy Transition) initiative aims to shift the country towards renewable energy sources reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And  South Korea’s "Creative Economy" policies focus on leveraging technology and innovation to drive economic growth and address social issues.

It is increasingly apparent that whether agendas are short or long term brings with them very different sets of mindsets that influence the way we prepare ourselves for the future. These have been called ‘diachronic’ considerations, where our perceived place in time and the value we put on the past, present, or future take primacy in shaping policies.  We explore the factors encouraging this orientation and the behavioural implications for strategists and policy makers on how to navigate these environments.

Diachronic government

Arguably there are periods in history where notions of time change dramatically and influence decision making. One example Victorian times when Darwin's theory of evolution introduced the concept of ‘deep time.’ This challenged the traditional, biblical timeline and encouraged Victorian society to look at the world in terms of historical and evolutionary progress, rather than static, unchanging terms that the religious doctrine at the time suggested.

More recently, sociologist Will Davies has set out the way that humans are increasingly divided by time, based on the year of their birth. First, escalating climate breakdown, which looks to wreak havoc over the course of the twenty-first century, will impact more on people the later they are born, creating ethical and political questions concerning what the living owe to future generations. And carbon deposits laid down millions of years ago are having devastating impacts not only today but many years into the future regardless of the steps we might take now.  As Andreas Malm suggests:

 “wherever we look at out changing climate, we find ourselves in the grip of time….Ours is, if anything, an epoch of diachronicity.”

The second way that ‘time’ in the shape of the year of birth divides people is the rise of assets and rents in advanced capitalist economies which bestow privilege on those that acquired assets such as housing in the past. As Davies points out, this was also exacerbated by Baby Boomers receiving free, or very cheap, social goods such as university tuition while later generations of Millennials had to deal with the impact of post-2008 wage stagnation and austerity.

Apocalypse mindset

No wonder then that we are living at a time where time feels as if it is in short supply for many people. This includes the 4 in 10 US adults who believe that humanity is living in the End Times with widespread fears of climate tipping points and the prospect of exponential and irreversible changes. Hardly a week goes by without yet another proclamation of the existential threat that AI has to the human race, with events such as  ‘Blue Screen Friday’ only making more salient the highly connected technology dependant lives we lead.  And there is no shortage of anxiety about the possibility of mass death from the range of pandemic possibilities we face, not least as the earth warms and undisturbed life forms from other eras come to haunt us today.

Political scientist Jonathan White writes that a sense of the future closing-in due to impending threats and a scarcity of time to prevent them defines how we live in the age of emergency politics. He suggests this means public life plays out against the backdrop of a “sense of finitude and threat”. Indeed, surveys suggest that it is common to fear lives will be worse for the future generations than for those living today.

And of course, as White points out, extreme conditions do not affect everyone equally. For some they can be thought of as threats that will play out for others in the future, but for many they are here today. Indeed, White points to estimates that the casualties of climate change are more than 5 million deaths globally every year:

“whereas many see today’s threats as hastening the passage to dystopia, for others the dystopia is already with us.”

How does this influence the mindsets of those shaping policy and strategies to manage risks? White suggests that in the environment of emergency, there is a much greater appeal of managerial forms of politics, responding to necessity and warding off threats rather than pursuing chosen goals. We can call on ‘Construal Level Theory’ here, reflecting that people perceive events differently depending on their psychological distance. Events that are psychologically distant (in terms of time, space, social distance, etc.) are thought about in more abstract terms, while events that are close are perceived in more concrete terms.

This means that in a period of emergency, the psychological distance to immediate concerns is minimized and policymakers are likely to adopt a more concrete and quantifiable immediate perspective. Decisions focus on the ‘here and now’ rather than on abstract, long-term goals. Indeed, the UK COVID Enquiry’s first report found that immediate health threats were prioritized over long-term societal impacts noting, "Emergency planning generally failed to account sufficiently for the pre-existing health and societal inequalities and deprivation in society."​ This underscores the lack of attention to longer term considerations of how the pandemic and the response measures would deepen existing disparities.

White argues that even climate change issues are often reduced to mere calculations. By focusing primarily on achieving Net Zero emissions, he suggests this overlooks other critical factors related to human well-being and environmental health, such as biodiversity, global health, and economic equity. This focus on carbon targets can make deadlines seem counterproductive to some climate scientists, who believe that outcomes depend on much more than just meeting these carbon goals. As White puts it:

 “Immediate problems drive out distant ones.”

Now we have covered the behavioural implications of operating in environments where the horizons are close, what do we know about this when navigating long-term ‘Missions?’

The psychology of missions:

Trying to predict changing conditions of the future relies on the assumption that existing goals, priorities, and values of participants will remain largely unchanged. Without the belief that these elements will stay constant, it becomes challenging to calculate future prospects. This, argues White, lead to false confidence about what the future holds and can render politics redundant. As White puts it:

"To assume the stability of people’s preferences is to discount the worth of a political process that seeks to change them."

With this in mind, taking a longer-term view of issues requires us to recognise that the possibilities for future are more open-ended. As such mission government is as much a focus on how to deal with risk and uncertainty that comes with this, pointing us in some particular behavioural directions.

First, effective and distributed risk management is vital for mission-driven government to ensure the breadth of stakeholders are willing to engage with and support bold initiatives.

• Risk Communication: Rather than focusing on raising awareness of risks, a mission-driven government enables risk management through communications that help organisations opportunities in their bold initiatives. Organisations often perceive risks based on potential losses rather than gains. This perception is shaped by past experiences, available information, and how risk scenarios are framed. Policymakers can develop interventions that frame risks in ways that highlight potential benefits and manageable challenges, helping businesses see opportunities rather than just potential losses.

• Trust: Rather than building power and control, a mission-driven government is focused on building trust. Clear and transparent communication builds trust, which is essential for managing (or ‘bridging’) perceived risks. Governments could usefully demonstrate trustworthiness so that other parties in the mission such as businesses can be confident in their actions and longer-term planning.

Mission-driven government will need to navigate and adapt to uncertain environments to achieve long-term goals.

• Adaptive Strategies: Rather than placing all bets on a specific rigid approach, a mission-driven government will support adaptation. Uncertainty requires flexible and adaptive strategies. Encouraging a test-and-learn approach can help them navigate uncertain environments more effectively. This involves experimenting with small-scale changes and scaling up successful interventions.

• Resilience Building: Rather than demanding flawless success or winner-takes all environments, mission-driven government will recognise that false-starts and setbacks will happen and creates resilience in the system. Building resilience is key to managing uncertainty. This involves preparing businesses to adapt to changes and recover from setbacks. Policies should support resilience by providing resources and training for contingency planning.

Decentralized and inclusive leadership is crucial for fostering innovation and responsiveness in mission-driven government.

• Distributed Leadership: Rather than leaders directing from the top, a mission-driven government allows space for and fosters distributed leadership. Leadership needs to be decentralized to empower local leaders and frontline staff, fostering innovation and responsiveness. It also encourages diverse perspectives and collaborative problem-solving.

• Collaborative Culture: Rather than decision-making being enacted by a small number and narrow (often senior) group, a mission-driven government enables and empowers collaboration.  A collaborative culture enhances decision-making by leveraging the collective intelligence of diverse stakeholders. Policymakers need to understand how to promote collaboration across different stakeholders and organizations to develop more holistic and effective solutions.

By adopting exploring and engaging with these behavioural strategies, mission-oriented governments should be better placed to navigate the complexities and uncertainties of considering these diachronic challenges.

Alternative forms of diachronic thinking

We have examined the notion of short term versus long-term thinking in terms of more immediate, and quantifiable options versus the uncertain and open options respectively. However, these are not the only ways in which the options are understood: ‘longtermism’ takes a very long view of human risk, calculating the implications of what we do today and how this plays out for the greatest number of people in the distant future.

In fact, this controversial approach seeks to make calculations of the greatest good in timespans that cover hundreds of years. The logic is that if there are 1.3 billion people in poverty today, and there are finite resources, then lifting all of these individuals out of poverty is good. But if we were to take an action that affected just 1% much larger population of people who exist in the future, that is a much higher number of people. Therefore, the argument suggests, if we are really altruistic, then we should not be focusing on currently existing people in poverty but instead, be focusing on these far-in-the-future people. This leads to the view that issues like poverty and climate change are seen as less critical since they don't pose an immediate threat of human extinction, unlike threats such as the emergence of artificial superintelligence, which some believe could jeopardize humanity's survival.

In a very different direction, cultural theorist Donna Haraway argues that we need to ‘stay with the trouble’ and engage with the complexities of the present to create more liveable futures. This perspective emphasizes the importance of embracing uncertainty and complexity in both now and in the future, fostering collaborative and inclusive efforts to address intertwined social, environmental, and technological challenges. Suffice to say, however, that supporters of longtermism likely have more power and money than Donna Haraway  advocates.

In conclusion

Diachronicity, the way in which we see ourselves in time, is a new battleground that is shaping how we do policy and strategy making. We can see the way that this is shaping approaches to policy and strategy decision making today – with recent examples of COVID response at one end and mission government at the other. A more explicit casting of the options and understanding of the associated behavioural implications surely allows us to challenge some of the assumptions within each, but also to better prepare ourselves to successfully navigate this in a more reflective way.