Political Will

A catch-all for not a lot

So, from time to time I will go off on a mini rant about some pet peeve of mine or other. This is one.

Often, political will is hailed or blamed as a (or sometimes the) main deal maker or breaker in policy implementation. Just typing the words “political will” in the news gives you a sense of how oft-used (and abused) the term is. This is especially the case when some policy recommendation or government intervention has not quite worked. “It was due to a lack of political will”. For example, the difficulties of Pakistan’s electricity system were recently blamed mainly on “the lack of political will” by a former special assistant to Pakistan’s Prime Minister, as he outlined his reasons for stepping down from his position.

But what is this political will? A useful definition of it is “the determination of an individual political actor to do and say things that will produce a desired outcome” (the authors also provide a fascinating discussion on the topic). This is perhaps less detailed when compared with how Derick W. Brinkerhoff defined it: “the commitment of actors to undertake actions to achieve a set of objectives … and to sustain the costs of those actions over time”. The fine difference between both definitions, I suppose, is that one uses an individual political actor doing and saying things, while the other focuses on the collective commitment of actors to not only take actions but sustain them over time. So as to avoid turning this into a lecture, let’s work with these definitions. I’m indifferent to either of them. In fact, I’m not a fan of the expression itself, nor am I keen on its application. I don’t think you should be, either.

What, in practical terms, does it do? Except you run a dictatorship or a government that is big on central planning, all the political will in the world cannot influence how a market becomes efficient. It cannot create things in a factory. It cannot create jobs (I will do a piece someday about minimum wage and the negative impact of it on the chances of the lower class to actually grow). It certainly is not a veritable source of innovation. It ain’t intellectual property. It is a convenient catch-all that perhaps speaks to the inspiration of government officials in carrying out their work, but it isn’t much else. I have many problems with it. I'll highlight two.

First, political will is not contagious. The successful implementation of a particular programme would probably need, for example, to start from a change in policy. The responsible government ministry or institution would put this policy together. Let’s say the policy clearly outlines the key actions that need to be taken, who will take them, and when they will be taken. Let us also assume that just one of these actions requires legislative change. Someone is going to draft that piece of legislation. Someone is going to facilitate the engagement of lawmakers to take it through whatever law-making process obtains in the country. All of these legislators are going to need to have a similar persuasion of political will for the legislation to pass without hassle. An alternative is that those with misaligned political will would then have to cut some deal. In the more developed climes, this would typically be some horse trade e.g. my constituency’s special interest projects for your big bill mandating the entire country to stop using a specific category of light bulbs. In the less developed climes, the horse trade could be less complex and just involve trading money in many guises (using the word “corruption” is so last year). Depending on the size of this legislative body, there could be a lot of trades if the torchbearers of this political will are in the minority. Egypt has 896 legislators. Thailand, 750. Ethiopia, 655. Sudan, 500. Nigeria, 469. Pakistan, 446. This is just for one policy action that is taking a legislative route. There could be seven of them. The sheer size of a typical (democratically elected and bicameral or multicameral) political wheel requires all or most of the engines to demonstrate “the commitment of actors to undertake actions to achieve a set of objectives … and to sustain the costs of those actions over time”. So, if this legislation fails to pass, … lack of political will, right? Is this why we’re increasingly – albeit not so directly, for now – saying “be like China” (we said this a lot during the handling of covid, for example)?

Second, the application of political will sometimes oversteps the mark(et). Nigeria’s power sector reform offers an example. You could argue that it was political will that led to the eventual deregulation of the generation and distribution ends of the country’s electricity system, in order for the private sector to run them. In the same vein, you could also argue that political will is what has prevented successive administrations from leaving the market to discover a tariff that will enable them to generate and distribute power for Nigerians. This price discovery difficulty – no matter the clever arguments that have been offered over the years about why Nigeria’s power sector has failed to generate, transmit and distribute up to 10,000 megawatts in over a decade of reform – is at the core of the problem. Not political will. Not corruption. Not bad actors in the value chain. The system cannot fund itself based on the heavily subsidised prices the government expects of it. The market is where the problem is, and the political will to simultaneously deregulate the market but hold on to pricing is in the way and has been all through the reform process. This does not require political will. I’d argue that this requires an understanding of basic economics.

So, instead of emphasising political will, what could the focus be? Perhaps the greatest showing of political will, if it is indeed inevitable that one cannot retire the expression, is in restraint. The ability of the government officials and their advisers to leave the market to discover price in response to meeting demand with supply. The ability of government officials and their advisers to meddle less in economic activity that they are perhaps not competent to conduct themselves. The ability of government officials and their advisers to avoid initiatives that end up picking winners (and losers) to support at the expense of other potential market players. The ability of government officials to focus more on guaranteeing property rights and building infrastructure (with immense help from the private sector).