Decoy goals: navigating institutional uncertainties through decoy politics

The deployment of strategies that decoy the true intentions of policies is now widespread but is often painted as a means to undermine public value. This article seeks to provide a more nuanced view by introducing the notion of decoy goals as a response to institutional uncertainties. Designing decoy goals, or goals meant to covertly change preferences for an otherwise unattractive goal, into policies is a deliberate strategy to either undermine democratic contest or to overcome elite-based politics. Through document analysis, two illustrative cases are analyzed to argue that decoy goals are used to make an otherwise controversial ‘target’ goal more acceptable. Decoy goals overcome uncertainties around how a policy is made, who has the power to make authoritative choices and actor’s position about policies. While decoy goals can be distortive, the article hopes to also establish it as an alternative strategy to design public policies under difficult environments.