I promised this post three months ago. October to be exact. One could not scroll through social media without encountering another account holding forth on the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern’s documentary. The commentary was predictable in its cadence: she was “all style, no substance,” her leadership “merely performative,” her legacy reducible to good communication in…

Performative governance is when governments focus more on appearing to take action instead of actually making real changes. It has become more noticeable in today’s media-driven politics, where the performance of governance can sometimes seem more important than the actual outcomes. The idea of performative governance builds on Edelman’s work on symbolic politics (1964), where…