Here are some recent phrases that entered the policy lexicon in the last few years that I absolutely hate – “whole of government” and “game changer.” There is a faddishness to tropes in the policy arena that proliferate, that capture a certain sentiment of the moment that soon become over-used. Earlier, it was “tipping point.” I kind of hated that one too.
These words are useful short-hand. Ah yes, a game-changer, that which changes the game, a dramatic development that upends our understanding of what will transpire. Yet, strung together with other stock phrases, you end up with policy pablum. 2013 was a game changer, and now we are at a critical crossroads. We need a whole of government response to the events of recent months, which represent a tipping point in the events (in Syria, North Korea, Iran, Brazil, Turkey). Gag. We should be offended by such writing, as it demeans the craft of writing, turns policy language in to rote speech.
We do need a common vocabulary. Why do I hate game-changer when words like anarchy and civil society are also bandied about as short-hand? Here is use of the phrase in an otherwise exemplary 2012 study for the National Academies Press on climate change and national security. These references take place within a couple of pages:
We agree with the need for a whole-of-government approach and note that the effort should include improved knowledge and monitoring of changing vulnerabilities as well as of climate trends.
A whole-of-government approach to understanding adaptation and vulnerability to climate change can advance the objectives of multiple agencies, avoid duplication of effort, and make better use of scarce resources.
The intelligence community should participate in a whole-of-government effort to inform choices about adapting to and reducing vulnerability to climate change.
The U.S. government should begin immediately to develop a systematic and enduring whole-of-government strategy for monitoring threats connected to climate change. This strategy should be developed along with the development of priorities and support for research.
What the hell does “whole of government” mean beyond greater inter-agency coordination? Do we need a new phrase for something that is already supposed to be happening? Something about the use of whole of government always seems to imply that it is an inherent good, that there are never downsides of bringing more agencies in to coordinate (as if there are not collective action problems associated with actors with heterogeneous preferences). Maybe asking for all the agencies to work together isn’t always a solution.
Perhaps I’m developing my slow, steady descent into grumpy old man-dom, but I tell my students that when I see these kinds of phrases in their work that they inspire an extremely negative reaction. Why? The point of higher education is to foster critical thinking, the ability of our students to develop a set of concepts and tools to understand the world. The boilerplate, the catch-phrases du jour seem to me the opposite of that. You reach for such words as filler and fluff. Words like anarchy have a richer conceptual underpinning that mean something.
What are the phrases and fad words that infuriate you? Is my reasoning off?
From the insider Bureaucrat perspective– the “filler and fluff” is exactly why these words appear in so many official documents. You are right to demand more from your students. But, recall that anything that comes out of the USG–from the simplest of talking points to the most authoritative of reports–is the product of a collective drafting, editing, and (most importantly) approval process (what we’d call “clearance process”). Words with rich conceptual meaning as well as precise and clear language often defeats the point, which is, first and foremost, to get the entire agency, or interagency, to agree on a common position. So, the fuzzy language allows everyone to see their desired position within the agreed language while, at the same time, committing the Government to as much continuity as possible.
The interesting thing here–the puzzle one might say if one was seeking a possible line of inquiry–is the bureaucratic and political process that produce such exciting terms as “whole of government” and “continue to move forward” and the like.
I think Iver Neumann’s IPS article “Why Diplomats Never Produce Anything New” captures this quite well. It certainly captures my day job better than any other article every written by an IR scholar.
I hate “whole of government”. It’s the buzzword of the day. There are many things that do not require the whole government to accomplish and sometimes the interagency just makes a hash of things.
Great suggestion to read Neumann’s piece. What’s interesting is that these phrases like “whole of government” are new. I’m unsure of the origins but it might have come from the UK or Australia but has become part of the lexicon of policy debate. You get other phrases like “soft power” or “smart power” becoming used quite frequently over a period of years when they weren’t before (see ngrams below). How do you get innovation in language even within organizations that select for inertia? Probably insertions by political appointees…
You put it very well. I was interviewing someone in Canada last week who was partly responsible for the branding of 3D: development, democracy, defence–this was a predecessor of whole of government. His point was yours essentially–having government agencies work together is supposed to be ordinary/normal behavior.
Such fogginess is how we get from constitutional search warrants to secret intelligence courts and pre-emptive broad SEIZURE of private information. Promising not to SEARCH it until later is not quite the same as reasonable cause for seizing it. I’ve seen enough of whole-of-government surveillance.