My Thoughts on Stone Ch. 6 - Stories

When you are working in advocacy there are usually two things you want to find to support your case with policymakers and sway them to your side. First, you want numbers to support your cause. If you can show that your program of choice helps X number of people in policymaker Y's district or that the program has a positive return on investment, you will often have a good chance to sway policymakers who are on the fence. Next, and sometimes more importantly, you want a symbol. You want someone from the policymaker's district who has personally been helped by program X to come to Washington and tell their story to the policymaker. As important as expert testimony or in-depth economic analyses are, they often have limited impacts on actual policies. When we get to chapter 17 we'll talk about some of the ethical issues that the desire for one-sided numbers and symbols can bring about. 

In my opinion,  Stone's chapter on symbols really gets to the crux of her argument that policy is really a battle of stories and argument. In policy, the symbols we invoke become short-hand for longer stories about the people, places, and things we want to influence. Finding neutral language to explain a situation becomes increasingly difficult as the word you choose to explain a phenomenon automatically invokes the story you are trying to tell.

As I have mentioned, I sometimes work on anti-prostitution policy. I try to stay neutral in my analysis of the problem, but this becomes difficult because the word I use to describe prostitution automatically implies a side. If I use the term "sex-trafficking" you know that I likely take the position that prostitution is always exploitative to women. If I use the word "sex work" it implies that I think that prostitution is an occupation. This same dynamic comes into play when we talk about abortion (Are you pro-choice or pro-abortion? Anti-choice or pro-life?) and immigration (Are they illegals, illegal aliens, illegal immigrants, or undocumented immigrants?) The word I use automatically gives away my underlying position because it automatically invokes the story I want to tell you.

Stone gives us some really interesting examples of types of stories. I will use the timely example of the deficit to explain these stories. The first is the far-right story of the deficit, the story of decline, "America used to be a much better country when we lived within our means, government spending is out of control and we need to eliminate the deficit or risk being taken over by China." Stymied progress can be seen as the partisan Democratic approach to the deficit "The deficit is important and we need to reduce it. Bill Clinton's administration balanced the budget and gave us a surplus. Since then, the Bush tax cuts and two unfunded wars have caused the current budget deficit." The change is an illusion story is represented by the GDP argument "As a percentage of GDP the deficit is a little higher than usual thanks to the economic collapse, but certainly not radically different from the past, and much lower than during the 1910s and 1940s." When it comes to the deficit, we don't see the helplessness and control story often, but it could be called the "Keynesianism is dead story". It goes like this "We used to think that government must run deficits to stimulate the economy in economic downturns, we now know that government stimulus doesn't affect the economy so  we can control our deficit despite the recession." There might be multiple conspiracy stories about the deficit, but one such story is that politicians don't really care about the deficit, they are just using it as an excuse to shrink the size of government. Finally, the blame the victim story would argue "The deficit is the fault of government "leeches" like the welfare queens and illegal immigrants who don't pay taxes but expect government services." All of these stories have a grain of truth to them, but none of them represent the whole truth and each proposes a specific government action.

Synecdoche is another common use of symbols, which I will not get into because it is one of your reading quiz questions for the week. 

Metaphor is one of the most powerful uses of symbols in the polis. We've talked about metaphor quite a bit. I think this is an important issue that policy analysts have to think about. When I am writing about the problem of prostitution and possible policy solutions, I have to ask "What is this problem like?" Is it like other types of service work? Is it like the drug trade? Is it like kidnapping? Is it an individual issue, a community issue, or a societal issue? Whichever I decide will influence how I look at the problem and the solution I ultimately propose. 

Stone gives us lots of visually striking metaphors. If we choose to see institutions like living organisms we may wonder if a problem is really part of a life-cycle of an institution. If we see society as a machine we may wonder how a problem either acts as one of the cogs pushing society along or how it could "gum up the works" and make society less efficient. Wedges and slippery slopes are common political metaphors. A wedge issue is one that is meant to divide a formerly united group. We often talk about the social issues abortion, gun rights, and gay marriage as wedge issues because they divide groups that might normally vote together. We hear about slippery slopes in terms of these same issues. The National Rifle Association tends to argue that any gun regulations are slippery slopes that will lead to the eventual banning of firearms. We may also use the metaphors of ladders, steps, or containers in similar ways. The metaphors of disease and war are interesting ones. We often hear them used in terms of social problems like crime and poverty. We hear of the "War on drugs" and the "War on poverty" or how the teaching of homosexuality in sex-ed "will infect the minds of our children."

One thing I've noticed is that once you read this chapter of Stone's book, you start to see these stories and symbols everywhere. What symbols have you noticed in policy debates?