Democratic Backsliding and the Policy Agenda: Losing Interest in, and Capacity for, the Future

Even in the best of times there is a “democratic myopia” (MacKenzie, Future Publics: Democratic Deliberation and Future-Regarding Public Action, Oxford University Press, 2020) that makes governments unwilling to consider longer term problems confronting their societies. Crumbling infrastructure, underfunded public pensions, and inattention to climate change are but three examples of the effects of this myopia in policymaking. Although some governments have done better than others with the time dimension of public policies, even the best-performing governments appear to have difficulties in making and implementing policies that have their principal payoffs in the future (Jacobs, Annual Review of Political Science, 19, 443–454, 2016; Sprinz, Long-Term Policy Problems: Definition, Origin, and Responses. In Predicting the Future in Science, Economics, and Politics (Vol. 126). Edward Elgar Publishing, 2014). Also, although this phenomenon has been labeled democratic myopia, non-democratic regimes do not appear immune to the time problem. While democratic myopia is a common affliction for governments, this chapter will examine the effects of populist governments on the capacity of governments to develop and implement longer-term policy interventions. The basic logic of populist regimes is to promise citizens the services they want, although in practice these regimes have been less concerned with policy than with promoting political goals. At least in the rhetoric of populism, this governmental responsiveness to the public can be contrasted to the technocratic elitism of the “Deep State”. This chapter will conceptualize future policymaking as a collective action problem, and discuss the ways in which populist politics undermine capacity to address future policy problems.