From Command to Coordination: Will 2026 see us rethink policy power in a complex UK?

In her recent blog “There aren’t any levers” Polly Mackenzie makes an important and timely point: the traditional metaphor of government as a system of levers to be pulled – tweak tax here, adjust benefit rates there – is obsolete. For my two cents, I think that Polly really nails it in this piece. In today’s complex societies, change rarely if ever flows through a single centralised lever of control. Instead, as Polly sets out, it more often emerges from disaggregated actors, incentives, behaviours, norms, and social systems that governments influence but do not fully control. Much to their frustration, I suspect.

I didn’t take Polly’s piece as a critique that is rooted in cynicism. Rather as a call to rethink our public policy governance across the UK – particularly how leaders set direction and coordinate across tiers of government and society – to build the capacity of institutions, communities, and individuals to act together in pursuit of shared goals.

As such, it made me very aware that the upcoming Holyrood and Senedd elections in May are critical moments in time that offer an opportunity to make governance work better for the wellbeing of people in places, not just for headline policy announcements.

The limitations of levers

The central insight in Polly’s blog is that the much-used analogy of “government levers”, the idea that ministers can simply pull on a particular policy and produce an outcome, is misleading and not fit for purpose. A tax cut might be precise on paper, but whether it delivers better lives depends on how people respond, how firms adjust investment, and how institutions implement change. The real drivers of change are more often systemic incentives and cultural signals, not technocratic switches. This resonates with our view here at Carnegie UK that sustainable improvements in complex public policy outcomes like child poverty, community resilience, healthy ageing, or economic inclusion are produced by multiple interactions between public services, families, markets, and communities.

That’s what distributed governance in practice means.

The ambitions behind wellbeing policy frameworks such as Scotland’s National Performance Framework and Wales’s Well-being of Future Generations Act exemplify this type of governance shift. While both frameworks face challenges in their design and implementation to ensure they are fit for purpose and impactful, they ultimately aim to embed long-term thinking and systems coordination over trusting in isolated “levers” or single ministerial interventions to drive change.

Elections as governance turning points

It is for exactly these reasons that this year’s elections in Scotland and Wales really matter. Not just because they will decide which party (or parties) holds office, but because they will also set the institutional mandate for how policy is made and governed over the next five years.

 

The myriad of wicked policy challenges we face today requires political leaders that understand that policy must be designed with and across sectors, recognising the limits of centralised control and that communities must be involved in designing and delivering change, not passive targets of programmes. The political moment we face means that government success will be measured by people’s lives improving (their health, wellbeing, security), not merely by fiscal targets being met.

This is governance as coordination and empowerment, not command and control.

This type of distributed governance is not just a technical choice, it’s a democratic one. It broadens “who gets to act” in the political system. Decisions about transport, housing, early years, climate adaptation, skills and innovation increasingly depend on partnerships between local authorities, civic organisations, employers, and citizens. The future of democratic devolution across the UK will shape wellbeing outcomes for people over this decade.

Devolved elections and the stakes for wellbeing policy

An overly centralised model often struggles with systemic issues because it can be easy to misdiagnose the nature of public policy problems. Poverty, educational attainment, the climate crisis and public health are not one-dimensional issues. They are systems outcomes shaped by distributed decisions across actors and environments.

Recognising this, wellbeing policy frameworks, like those championed by Carnegie UK and embedded in Scottish and Welsh governance, emphasise outcomes over outputs and integrated policymaking.

When decision-makers and policy-makers acknowledge the absence of simple “levers,” they open up space for new kinds of public leadership, ones that work through influence, coalition building, evidenced insight and shared purpose.

Improving our collective wellbeing in a sustainable and enduring way cannot be delivered by central command alone. It must be cultivated through distributed governance that aligns purpose, capacity, and action across all levels of government and wider society. The Scottish and Welsh elections present the opportunity for those seeking a mandate to govern to make that shift not just aspirational, but operational.