GARY RYNHART: Maybe things are not as bad as we tend to think they are

The British Labour Party’s election manifesto in the 1980s was called the longest suicide note in history, full as it was of binary ideological commitments. These days political communication has gone the other way, distilling things down to just three or four words.

“Make America great again”, “Take back control/Get Brexit done” are familiar even to people outside the US and UK. Then there are the local flavours “White monopoly capital” and “Radical economic transformation” — both cooked up by the hired guns of now defunct British PR company Bell Pottinger. These three or four-word formulas are devastatingly effective because they specifically target people’s misconceptions.

A bunch of books have outlined this trend in the last few years.

Bobby Duffy’s The Perils of Perception: Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything showed how a lot of prejudices are rooted in misperceptions and prevailing myths. A third of the French population are Muslim, and a third of the US population are immigrants, according to perception surveys in those countries. The real answers are 8% and 14% respectively.

In Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World — and Why Things Are Better Than You Think Hans Rosling used the same questionnaire to test both blue and white-collar workers. The majority of all those tested got most of the answers (very) wrong.

Similarly, there is an arc to believe the worst rather than the best. Harvard psychology professor Thomas Pinker laid out the case in Enlightenment Now that, globally speaking, people live longer and are richer and less subject to violence than in times past. Similarly, in It’s Better Than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear, Gregg Easterbrook outlined how maybe things weren’t as bad as portrayed.

Frans Cronje did the same in 2000 with The Rise Or Fall of South Africa: Latest Scenarios, demonstrating that progress since 1994 across a number of social variables has been pretty good. All true, but mostly disbelieved.

There are probably two reasons for such misconceptions. The first is the tendency to tell the bad over the good story, which plays into the perception of things getting worse. Second, information is constant and not always accurate. Consequently, governments everywhere struggle to communicate almost anything positive they are doing. There is instinctive mistrust leading to misconception.

Added to this, government messaging often targets multiple audiences: voters, interest groups, investors. Each can want different things. It’s not then so surprising that according to the Edelman Trust Barometer (January 2022) less than half of voters in Germany, Britain or the US trust their governments. A quarter of voters believe in deep state conspiracy theories.

Communication from government requires two critical aspects, credibility (you do what you say) and clarity (people can understand you). New Zealand’s “Better Public Services” campaign a few years ago was a good example. It focused on 10 issues, such as reducing serious crime and supporting vulnerable children. It had a set of realistic time-bound and transparent targets. Publicly holding officials and ministers to account ensured it moved at a brisk pace. 

Mallory E Compton and Paul T Hart’s 2019 Great Policy Successes provides 15 case studies, most from rich economies, ranging from specific policies like social security in Brazil, to game-changing labour market reforms (Germany). Some were based on foresight, others were reactive or capitalised on political opportunity. Success was mostly driven by four interlinked actions: successful programmatic performance (do what you say you will); effective process management (it is transparent and vested interests are exposed); political legitimacy of a policy (it’s popular); and successful endurance and legitimacy (it outlasts political cycles). 

Successful examples also demonstrated the importance of effective messaging that inspires people and makes them understand what policy change can do for them. Implementation in SA would be hard going as there can be an almost overwhelming belief that the government achieves nothing, which the facts show to be somewhat unfair.

Business Day columnist Isaah Mhlanga recently outlined various areas of progress, some of them on big-ticket items such as the break-up of Eskom (“Progress on Ramaphosa’s priority projects earns pass score”, February 10). But not much of it gets through to a wary public that has settled on a failed political narrative.

In a crowded, noisy and disbelieving marketplace governments need to promote a believable narrative that better days are coming. Every government is faced with a range of issues from inherited problems to external factors beyond their control. Yet public opinion will only tolerate a limited amount of blame shifting and obfuscation.

There is an old Soviet joke that an incoming governor is handed two letters by his predecessor with the advice to open them when a crisis hit. A crisis soon hits, so the governor opens the first letter, which reads “blame the last guy”.  When the next crisis hits he opens the second letter. It reads “write two letters”.

Rynhart is senior specialist in employers' activities with the International Labour Organization, based in SA.