Philosophy and policy.

Byline: Muhammad Khudadad Chattha

UNIVERSITIES around the world emphasise technical tools used for designing public policies. They will make sure that you understand concepts such as causal identification, cost-benefit analysis and economic theory. However, most policy schools do not put the same level of emphasis on philosophical training. Shackled by a form of scientism emerging after the Enlightenment, philosophy and its study now suffer from an image problem.

Philosophy's application to public policy is underexplored, in large part because of the dominant perception that the scientific method alone holds the key to viable public policy. And yet, philosophy and public policy are deeply interconnected - a fact that decision makers ignore at the expense of society at large.

Let's take the example of the standard training in economics to help decision-makers design evidence-driven policies. While these tools enable decision makers to measure the effectiveness of a policy, they are inadequate in analysing ethical implications. Questions of justice are supremely important and yet receive little philosophical rigour in the decision-making process.

Philosophy's application to public policy is unexplored.

A natural consequence is that policymakers often rely on their own judgements. The example of the Covid-19 catastrophe across the world sheds light on this. The cash transfer programme in Pakistan, the furlough scheme in the UK and the fiscal package in the US all make strong assumptions about fairness. The recent global discussions about the introduction of wealth taxes are as much about equity as they are about economic efficiency. Concerns about the expanding role of government and potential erosion of individual privacy depend on how we define the boundaries of freedom. These are all tough philosophical questions that cannot be answered by relying on our instincts.

Another related problem is that there are deep connections between any sub-discipline in public policy, and philosophy. Let's again take the example of economics. Whether you have utilitarian or Rawlsian view about justice, it has massive implications about how you model individual behaviour and, consequently, how you analyse the welfare implications of a policy. A typical researcher in economics will estimate the welfare implications of a policy, implicitly making an assumption of how welfare is defined (typically utilitarian).

Modern economists doing policy relevant work shy...