Policy elites confident in their own vision repeat a cycle: they declare a crisis, impose a solution, see results worsen, and blame something other than the solution.
Thomas Sowell described the four stages in The Vision of the Anointed (1995), drawing on American policy from sex education to criminal justice. The anointed, in his account, are those who see themselves as uniquely enlightened, and their vision is insulated from evidence because failures are put down to insufficient implementation or to opponents.
In practice
- A scheme to reduce truancy is followed by higher truancy, and its sponsors conclude that it was underfunded.
- A manager's reorganisation makes the team slower, and the manager explains that the team resisted change.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation is motivated reasoning: people invested in a policy read bad results as proof that it was not applied fully. Another is institutional: those who design policies rarely bear their failures.
- In its favour
- Describes a recognisable pattern of self-sealing policy advocacy, and is consistent with research on the sunk cost fallacy and escalation of commitment.
- Against it
- Critics argue the cases are selected, and that the same four stages can be found in policies favoured by any side, Sowell's included. It offers no way to tell a failed policy from one that needed more time.
- Standing
- Contested over the selection of its cases. Compare the sunk cost fallacy and Sowell's constrained vision.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works