Refusing to Evolve: How Static Institutions Fuel Extreme Voter Reactions

Let’s talk about continuous improvement again—because let’s face it, in the world of IT, if you’re not improving, you’re basically walking backward on the up escalator. Tech folks already know the drill: find a problem, release a fix, gather feedback, push another update, rinse and repeat. That’s the difference between having a system that stays relevant and having a fossil. We accept that software is never “done,” because perfection is always out of reach—but that drive for iteration gets us at least a little closer every time.

Now, shift your gaze from the wonderful world of rapid releases over to the realm of governments. We’re used to thinking about politics in a legislative sense—laws that never get updated, centuries-old structures that are treated like holy writ, and so on. But let’s go broader. Governments have a monopoly on a bunch of basic functions—think public transportation, infrastructure management, licensing departments, you name it. In theory, these functions are there to serve the public good. In practice, they frequently treat “the way we’ve always done things” as some sort of unimpeachable gospel. And that’s when the trouble starts.

Imagine if your city’s Department of Transportation was run like a scrappy tech startup. Engineers would be out there gathering data on traffic patterns, testing micro-improvements to signals, and releasing updates to keep the system running at peak efficiency. Instead, a lot of times you end up with a highway project that takes ages to plan and even longer to build, based on design standards from the early 2000s. By the time it finally opens, guess what? The entire traffic landscape has changed, and we get stuck in “perpetual gridlock 2.0.”

Same goes for offices that handle permits and licenses—DMV jokes exist for a reason. If it was run like a best-in-class software service, we’d see user research, UX overhauls, workflow streamlining, all that good stuff. Instead, the approach tends to be: “Wait, there’s an issue? Write up a note, we’ll ‘get to it’ next decade.” When you’ve got a monopoly—like your local government does on driver’s licenses—there’s no competitor forcing you to improve. It’s a captive customer base, so the impetus to innovate is basically zip.

This inertia extends to enforcement agencies and judicial systems, too. You’d think, in a world of data-driven everything, we’d see advanced analytics on recidivism, community policing methods, sentencing guidelines, and so on. You know—versioning, iterative solutions, all the good stuff you see in continuous improvement culture. But if you peek under the hood, it’s often more like a black-and-white movie compared to the 4K streaming world the private sector lives in. They’re using legacy systems, or no systems at all, and pushing the same protocols year after year. Why change? Because improvement? That’s “not how it’s always been done.”

Of course, this might be tolerable if it didn’t affect trust. But it does. When people see that a service is locked in time, they lose faith in it. When they realize no one’s even trying to fix glaring problems—like 1940s-era processes for filing taxes—they start looking for alternatives. And when there aren’t better alternatives at home, they start latching on to wild ideas from politicians who promise to blow the whole thing up and build it from scratch. That’s how we end up with dramatic political swings, and that’s how we get a population that’s ready to throw out the old guard in favor of “anything different.”

You don’t see this problem in tech, or at least not on the same scale, because a refusal to improve would be business suicide. Let’s say your startup decides to rest on version 1.0. Meanwhile, your competitor is on 5.7, ironing out bugs, implementing new features, shipping updates over the weekend. By the time you realize your app is behind, you’re already out of users. Game over. So in the tech ecosystem, it’s either move or die. The government, by contrast, rarely has to worry about losing “customers.” When you have a monopoly, you can afford to act like you’re the only show in town—and in many cases, you are.

But just because a monopoly can get away with stagnating doesn’t mean that’s good for anybody. If you want a stable, trustworthy system, you can’t count on name recognition alone; you need to deliver. And delivering means doing the messy, unglamorous work of trying new things, failing fast, and patching the holes. Continuous improvement might not be easy, but failing to improve is a surefire way to see your credibility circled down the drain. Ironically, the more governments try to bury their heads in the sand about modernizing, the more they fuel extreme blowback from the public.

The solution? Governments could take a page out of the IT playbook and start building iteration into everything—legislation, infrastructure management, bureaucratic processes, law enforcement techniques, the whole nine yards. Don’t wait years to overhaul a system that’s obviously broken. Adjust, gather data, adjust again. Embrace the fact that everything is always in beta. Show the public you’re actively working to fix things, rather than doubling down on the same old approaches. Sure, there’ll be hiccups, but at least you’re moving forward instead of treading water.

At the end of the day, people need to see that systems can adapt and respond to new challenges. That’s exactly what continuous improvement is all about—keeping pace with reality, refusing to accept “good enough,” and staying one step ahead of obsolescence. Governments that do this will earn public confidence, while the ones that don’t will keep running into that brick wall of distrust. And trust me, it’s a much softer landing when you’re updating iteratively rather than waiting for the big crash.