Is there such thing as “Slow Policy”?

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion (and criticism) about the pace of policy making, both in Washington and around the country. While many who voted for the President are unhappy that he is making changes too slowly, Republicans have advocated for a return to the drawing board with health care reform and an overall slowdown of policy making. In hearing this push from Republicans, I am struck by the timeliness of the Winter 2010 edition of Good Magazine, which is devoted solely to all facets of the Slow Movement. Originating with the Slow Food Movement, which advocates eating only local, sustainable, more nutritious, and eco-friendly foods, the Slow movement has spawned a number of offshoots, including the Slow Cities Movement, the Slow Money Movement, and even the Slow Parenting Movement.

This begs a question: is there such thing as “Slow Policy”? What can the Slow movement teach us about public policy and policy implementation? The answer may lie in the Slow Design Movement. While Slow Design advocates argue longer design processes with more time for research, contemplation, real life impact tests, and fine tuning, Slow Design also incorporates longer cycles of human behavior and sustainability into the design. Its focus is to design something that has a lifecycle longer than its current user. The design process advocates openness and collaboration, and designers are seen as the ones who make the informed decisions about what to include and what not to include in the design. Saul Griffith, a Slow Designer and MacArthur Genius grant recipient, advocates for “heirloom” design, which is an object that will last multiple generations because of its function, timelessness, and beauty. While the Slow Design process and philosophy was started as a way to approach the design of tangible items (furniture, cars, etc), the principles of Slow Design can be applied to public policy, with elected officials and public administrators serving as the lead designers.

A week ago on this Blog, Craig advocated for voters to move beyond looking at the personal failures of our leader and focus on the larger issues at play. A second failure with democracy is that every politician will do what they need to do to win the next election. This leads politicians to focus on short-term results. In Slow Design, short-term thinking and short product life cycles lead to a cultural sense of a world speeding up. Through one lens, the results of the special Massachusetts Senate election can be seen as slowing movement. But from a Slow Movement perspective, the result is a speeding up of the policy design process by focusing on the immediate rather than the longer-term, regenerative policy solutions that are needed at this time.