The fundamental issue in governance is not the existence or the quality of a narrative. Rather, it is the distance between the citizens, who are the primary stakeholders in their own lives, and the administrative leaders responsible for the representative system that supports those lives. To bridge this gap between politics and the public, narratives driven by arbitrary incentives are often employed, leading to a detachment from the realities of civic life.
For many citizens, it is difficult to embrace these narratives as stakeholders in their daily existence. Consequently, there are calls for “de-narrativization.” However, even if the “secular” necessity of daily life is treated as the ultimate cause, one cannot truly escape narrative. When considering how to develop, maintain, and manage the infrastructure that supports our lives, the handling of financial resources must be addressed.
The management of money is a matter of allocation, which inherently involves prioritization and value judgments. Prioritizing the stability of daily life is itself a value judgment—a narrative that treats the secular as a grand cause. Meanwhile, regardless of the narrative, the representative system remains the fundamental structure of modern society.
This representative system creates the distance between politics and citizens, and narratives are used to fill that void. This distance is one of interests and information, arising from differing positions. In this context, distortions emerge in incentive design, such as simplified narratives aimed at a politician’s reelection or the electorate’s reaction to them. These distortions are the true problem.
