I have been listening to a great podcast recently. It is by former Tory politician, Rory Stewart. It is about how alleged knowledge can cause hubris and bad decision making on the presumption politicians know human behaviour.

Stewart discovers that Human behaviour is often unpredictable, especially when people become aware of policies designed to control their actions. They tend to adapt in unexpected ways, which can undermine the intended effects of those policies.

The Cobra Theory

A well-known example of this occurred during British rule in India. At the time, Delhi was facing a cobra infestation, so British administrators decided to offer a bounty for every dead cobra. Initially, the policy seemed effective—the cobra population decreased as people brought in cobra skins to claim their reward.

However, the population soon began to rise again. Upon investigation, the British discovered that people had started breeding cobras specifically to claim the bounty. Realizing their strategy had backfired, the British cancelled the reward.

In response, the breeders, who had set up “cobra farms” on the outskirts of Delhi, released the now-worthless cobras back into the wild. As a result, Delhi ended up with an even larger cobra problem than before—an unintended consequence of a well-meaning policy.

Certainty

The conclusion is that politicians set policy with certainty when they have not got a clue people will react. How some people will want policy to work whilst opponents or even internal sceptics, will want it to fail. So, we have a system that won’t admit to itself that it knows incredibly little amount about these things that are incredibly important and some of which we could make some quite good progress. However, you’re not going to make progress by imagining that you’re already there.

That is a huge problem with democracy and why many observers of policy failures are seeing a Citizens Charter as a positive way forward. Where people without government career paths or outside incentives can be a huge part of policy making. We already randomly pick jurors from the electoral roll, so why not apply the same practice for setting policy?

Anyway if you have got this far and are still interested, you can find the podcast here. It really is enlightening.