How to understand people’s different values to create policy solutions

As humans, we’re influenced by the environment, our families, our teachers, and the people we trust the most. Often, our minds are shaped very early in our childhoods.

Public service practitioners and policymakers play a significant role in shaping public services, strategy, and government. Their influence is rooted in their intrinsic values, their education, and the policies and structures of the organizations they work in.

Through my family and in campaigns I’ve been involved in, I was raised to believe in solidarity over individualism, even though I went to schools dominated by a belief in hierarchy, individualism, and competition.

At university, I was exposed to a variety of thinkers across the political system and methods ranging from the ultra competitive Sciences Po Grand Oral to the participatory involvement of the decentralised and autonomous Barcelona, to a more multicultural but also sometimes neo-colonial perspective of the public affairs department of a famous French energy company.

What was most important from all was in different ways to constantly question and challenge — who is this person speaking on behalf of, why are they putting forward this view, what if we thought about it differently? This active engagement is crucial in understanding and addressing cultural values in policy solutions.

How can we deconstruct what we define about terms like the state, the market or the police? It is difficult to understand or tackle racism in the justice system if we don’t understand its colonial system.

The culturaltheory argues there are four main cultural groups.

• Hierarchical
• Egalitarian
• Individualistic
• Fatalistic

When people argue over a policy solution, they expose a difference of options and potentially different cultural values. Awareness of these dynamics can lead to more nuanced and culturally sensitive policy-making.

Hierarchical groups created institutions that can stabilise regulate, and value expertise. However, they also value the dominanceof one group over another, reinforcing…hierarchies and inequalities.

Egalitarian groups seek to ensure everyone is equal, and equalities, often created by hierarchies, should be fought against. Egalitarian solutions can help, but they also risk levelling down as much as levelling up.

Individualist groups favour the freedom of people to do what they want. If left to their own devices, individualists can look out for themselves, which can be good but fail if some individuals don’t have the same assets as others to thrive.

Fatalistic groups are the opinion that we can’t change anything.

What could you do?

Why not have a mix of solutions that combine the different cultural values — solutions that create new institutions (i.e. Young Lambeth Cooperative, Open University), egalitarian approaches (i.e. Human Rights Act, Equalities Act, new rights), individualistic approaches (i.e. programmes for entrepreneurs to support new forms of solidarity). This open-minded approach can lead to more comprehensive and effective policy solutions.