This book has presented a case, based on my experience and research by others, that culture and values need to be at the heart of thinking about policy making. I am not claiming that this is the only lens through which policy making can be viewed, or that taking such a view solves all the challenges a policy maker can face. Instead, I hope you agree that thinking about policy without reflecting on these factors risks missing out important elements, and putting culture and values closer to the centre of our world-view will help explain why efforts to change policy turn out the way they do.

As I said in the Introduction, the recommendations for what policy makers should do differently are necessarily tentative, as they draw heavily on my own experience, which is largely in the context of central government, the wider public sector and civil society organisations in the United Kingdom. Other parts of the policy-making system and other countries will create different challenges in which culture and values play out in different ways. Naturally, in keeping with the overall approach of this book, I would advise the reader to take my suggestions as a starting point for developing policy-making practice consistent with their own values and the culture in which they are operating.

My first and most important conclusion is about clarity and honesty. Recognising when a debate or a decision rests on culture and values and being transparent about that is a prerequisite for a healthy political culture. I believe that many debates that are currently conducted in the language of feasibility and cost are actually about fairness, justice and prioritisation of interests. Policies are often evaluated against technocratic criteria while they are really aimed at sending a message or constructing a narrative. We have set up a framework of accountability that requests and then provides information that is irrelevant to the values-based decisions that voters and policy makers actually take. So I think that to put culture and values at the heart of policy making we first need to recognise that they are there already and be up-front and honest about the role they play. Without this, it will be hard to make progress on the other ideas.