Why the ban as policy tool has come to stay, By Uddin Ifeanyi
Reading Time: 4 mins read
Look
, however, at any item that it has seized our government’s fancy to proscribe over the years, and one cannot escape this
contradiction
between intent, eventual outcome, continued usefulness, and out
–
of
–
whack benefit versus cost profiles. It is tempting to then suggest that no ban of any activity, process, event or even person must be enacted ahead of a full discussion
of these different dimensions of the conversation
. In the case of Indian hemp,
to take but the most obvious example, the world
had to wait on
the
broadening and deepening
of
science to remove the many prejudices around
the herb
.
In this light, t
he point of a detailed discussion ahead of any act of prohibition is to try as much as possible to take in all the evidence without which most
such
bans are but dog whistles to narrow political constituencies.
Yet confronted by
tough economic
conditions
, and desperate to flag
to its base that it is acting
to ameliorate some of these,
the tendency
for policymakers to
lash out
at make-believe
piñatas
is irresistible.
Are these bans populist totems, then?
Whatever they may be,
one fact is beyond dispute
. T
he
more strident
the feedback, the
more
exaggerated the sense of
the losing sector’s pain
, the likelier
the course of action would be welcome
d
by
large swathes of
the populace.
Vested interests
, on the other hand,
are
noticeably
less voluble
. Arguably, this trait might explain why this cohort is
more effective in
safeguarding its self-interests
. But
by far the more poignant argument is that t
he
numbers
of the upper classes that might be distressed by a ban
are never enough to meet the
average citizen’s
requirements
for schadenfreude: that those
suffering from the new restrictions must be plentiful and their pain
visibly
more than mine.
If bans lean for their effects on approbation from the streets, t
hey
are, in this restricted reading,
both a driver of responses
in
and
the result of
the
many outcomes of the
electoral cycle.
It is not just that the data with which evidence-based policy-making trickle in
over several such cycles
.
Nor that because of this, proper policy reviews
may
span electoral cycles.
In a democracy with its regular return to the polls, p
oliticians
are not engineered
to think through
processes both
mentally exerting
and
long tailed
.
The
“people”
on the other hand would rather have s
oundbites
than the recondite
ruminations of subject-matter experts. Is it any wonder
then, that across the world,
the new populism loathes experts?
These
grouping do not just lack political legitimacy. They
also
tend to
muddy
matters
—
especially many that appeared binary until the
experts
interven
e
.
If the discussions that
go with evidence-based policymaking add layers of costs to
policy options, we need remind ourselves that few policies are
more difficult
to
walk back
than
those reached
impulsively
. And since, invariably
,
most such policymaking
cost more
eventually
than the benefits against which they were advertised,
the argument against bans
as a policymaking mechanism is a compelling one
.
Unfortunately, to eschew bans is to have a government thoroughly understand
the dynamics of worrisome processes, and to choose solutions that
strengthen individual liberty of thought and action across the many dimensions of the polity.
Nigeria has never had such a government.
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