Unpredictable governmental policy

Government policy dilemmas
Political uncertainty
Inadequate government policy
Incoherent government policies
Unclear government policies
Unstable government policy
Frequently changing government policy
Arbitrary government decision-making
Unpredictable public administration
Expedient policy reversals
Government equivocation
Incoherent national programmes

Incidence

The transition of eastern European countries to market economies since 1989 was jeopardized by a range of infrastructure, investment and employment problems. For these to be defused before they derailed the restructuring process and/or led to a social explosion, it was recommended that the coherence of both national programmes and of international assistance needed to be greatly increased. Without coherent national programmes, international assistance is unlikely to be very effective because it would not necessarily be aimed at breaking the key constraints and bottlenecks; and without adequate international assistance, coherent transition programmes could well founder.

Claim

High levels and rapid growth of human productivity are exacerbated by excessively frequent changes of direction in government policy, legal frameworks which fail to limit the scope for arbitrary decisions, and public administration which fails to take account of considerations of fairness and predictability.

Western governments labelled the Chinese massacre in Tiananmen square a massacre, but when the Thai government did the same thing in Bangkok it was quickly forgotten. Boris Yeltsin's actions in arbitrarily dismissing the opposition in Moscow (and then shelling them) was labelled a victory for democracy, even though he was a former hard-line Communist.

Decision-maker optimism and lack of criteria for decisions on appropriate responses to climate change are generally greater obstacle to initiating action that scientific uncertainty. Yet it is often discussion of scientific uncertainty that can have the most paralyzing effect on decision makers.