The Ezra Klein Show: Interview with Jennifer Pahlka about where government policy implementation goes wrong (and why government doesn't always work well)

A transcript of the podcast can be found here.

I found this episode incredibly interesting. Specifically in how a bunch of well-intentioned people can end up with bad (or inefficient) outcomes because we've set up a system of incentives that doesn't promote the outcomes we are hoping to achieve.

TL;DR:

One of her big points, one I’ve come to appreciate a lot more in recent years, is that even liberals who care a lot about government don’t care enough or track closely enough how implementation actually happens. Delivery often happens out of sight, except for the people who need that delivery.

In our media — I mean, we’re a part of this. I’m part of this problem, too. There’s a ton of focus on politics, on elections, on big policy questions and fights and theories. But then the bill passes and the nitty-gritty of how that policy actually shows up in people’s lives is left up to someone somewhere. And when it doesn’t show up in people’s lives or even makes people’s lives worse because of how it is implemented, there’s often no outcry because there’s no attention, and so there are no fixes.

I thought this segment also sums up the issue they're addressing quite well:

EZRA KLEIN: I just want to note that everybody in this story is a liberal who wants government to work well.

JENNIFER PAHLKA: Yeah.

EZRA KLEIN: I just think that’s important to say here because it’s something you say towards the end of your book, that working in government is a really valuable thing to do, in part because it will change your view on what sometimes makes government work poorly.

And one of the almost spiritually difficult things about reading your book, if you’re somebody who does care about government, is knowing that this is a lot of people who are doing their best, who have, in many cases, much more difficult jobs that require much more endurance and creativity to serve the public than anybody in the private sector does. And yet, we’re getting this outcome somehow, right?

I’ve known a lot of people at the top of government, the people who work in offices in the West Wing. And they’re all very, in some conceptual way, aware that government is inefficient. They don’t want it to be. Bill Clinton had Al Gore do reinventing government. Barack Obama hired the first C.I.O. to look over the government — Chief Information Officer. Joe Biden is somebody who when he was a Senator often talked about government inefficiency. Their chiefs of staff are impatient management-oriented people.

JENNIFER PAHLKA: Yeah.

EZRA KLEIN: And yet, somehow from the top, even though they talk about this all the time on the campaign trail — no Democrat wants to be a pro-inefficient government Democrat — this does not filter down somehow. Why?

They also discussed the sociology of government and how that can contribute to the problem, too. Which I found at once both fascinating as well as something that could so obviously go wrong.

EZRA KLEIN: There’s another dimension here that you point out. And it’s a sociological observation about government that as soon as I read it, I realized is completely true. That knowing a lot about politics is very high status in government. If you’re considered a tactical political genius, that’s great. Knowing a lot about policy, having very big policy ideas, that’s also very high status. Implementation isn’t.

JENNIFER PAHLKA: No.

EZRA KLEIN: Why?

JENNIFER PAHLKA: I think it goes back very deep in our culture. I mean, I think that’s not just true in government. Let’s be honest, right? Big ideas people get a lot of status in our society.

EZRA KLEIN: Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk.

JENNIFER PAHLKA: Well, yes, big ideas guy. [LAUGHS]

A friend of mine who worked in the government digital service in the U.K. pointed me to this idea that’s written about the British civil service. That it is literally divided between the intellectuals and the mechanicals.

Now, I think that the digital age has complicated this in a lot of ways. If you look at, say, metaphysical Silicon Valley, if coding is a mechanical task, it’s the way you implement something, all those companies were founded by coders. Mechanicals in that framework are at the top.

And lots of interesting — good and bad — things have come out of that culture, which is really distinct from the culture of government where the intellectuals are at the top and have the power. And the people who write the code or do the designs that implement these programs are really, really, really far down. They’re at the very bottom.

EZRA KLEIN: In a way, they’re not even at the bottom. They’re outside.

JENNIFER PAHLKA: They’re outside. This is true.