Transforming Outrage Into Policy Reform

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The recent dismissal of the director of Armenia’s Genocide Museum-Institute (AGMI) triggered a familiar wave of outrage across Armenian media and diaspora news platforms. While institutional design and independence are important issues, much of the Armenian and diaspora media seems to be reacting impulsively and in multiple directions at once. Writing under the amorphous byline “The Editor”, Zartonk framed the dismissal as an issue of social justice and Artsakh; Asbarez hosted an op-ed that called Armenia’s political and intellectual environment a “swamp” and described the dismissal as a “dismantling” of the Genocide Institute; CivilNet raised critical governance issues, but implied the museum is independent from the government, which is technically true yet does provide not the full picture. Although the AGMI is institutionally independent, it fulfills a specific state-mandated role, receives government funding, and forms a key component of Armenia’s official diplomatic engagements, particularly in hosting foreign delegations. 

The dizzying diaspora media ecosystem, while often failing to offer readers a clear issue to focus on, tends to be highly effective at whipping up Armenian communities around the world into a familiar frenzy of outrage. Unfocused or misdirected outrage may help online platforms grow and increase ad revenue, but it is not very helpful for positive social change. 

A public outcry is much more than a chance to vent political frustrations. It is, first, an opportunity for the public to learn or refresh their institutional understanding and become more educated about the topic at hand; second, it indicates an open policy window, more commonly known as a window of opportunity: a time-sensitive metaphorical opening in which pushing society toward significant change becomes conceivable, creating an environment primed for agenda setting. It is a specific moment in time, relevant to a particular policy area or societal issue.

Another way to understand this phenomenon is through the punctuated equilibrium theory (PET), which argues that public policy tends to remain stable for extended periods, then is “punctuated” by rapid shifts and policy change. These shifts are enabled by these windows of opportunity, when an external event disrupts what may have been decades of stability and continuity. The 2015 Electric Yerevan protests illustrate this well. A sudden public backlash against electricity price increases disrupted a stable but opaque regulatory system, leading to concrete changes, including an external audit of the national utility, the restructuring of ownership, and increased regulatory scrutiny in tariff-setting.

This tells us two important things about the policy change process. First, change requires patience. If you want to change how a government or society operates, especially when that mode of functioning has existed for a long time, PET suggests that sooner or later an opportunity will emerge to break through prevailing norms and create real change. Second, we can prepare for these opportunities because we know they will come. The United States had wanted to invade Iraq for decades; 9/11 was the external event the Bush administration used to create a significant shift in America’s military policy. 

Policy entrepreneurs understand this process, so they bide their time, prepare the policies and changes they want to advance, and then strike while the iron is hot and the window is open. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but that window of opportunity was used effectively to push a policy through, whether it’s harmful or beneficial. 

Policy Entrepreneurs are individuals, within or outside organizations, who advocate for the policies they want and have expertise in the specific policy area or issue they focus on. They can be advocates, politicians, or field experts. They hold detailed knowledge of the existing policies they want to change, and are equipped with a technical artillery of specific, evidence-based policy proposals that describe exactly how reforms to existing policies can be made. This takes a level of industry that goes beyond reactionary politics. A key component in utilizing the policy window is the media; without news organizations, there is no direct channel for policy focused individuals, think tanks, or advocacy groups to transmit their proposals to the broader public during these opportune moments. If a protest takes place in a forest and no media is around to cover it, does it make a sound?

Now let’s apply these concepts to the specific event of the resignation and removal of Dr. Edita Gzoyan. Museum staff and board members protested the dismissal. Check. The media covered it immediately, turning it into a public uproar. Check. So far so good, the window is open. The media then used the event to wage a laser-focused pressure campaign on the government while also educating the public on why the dismissal was both a failure of institutional design and an example of the widespread cultural acceptance of a museum director resigning on request, rather than disobeying the Prime Minister and putting up a public fight in the name of independence. They then used the opportunity to interview policy experts and report their views, putting forward concrete proposals to reform the laws and culture that allowed such an event to take place, and doing this so brazenly that the Prime Minister would never feel comfortable going on TV and claiming the dismissal was his own doing. 

Unfortunately, this did not happen.

Instead of forming an advocacy coalition (a group of individuals and/or organizations with the same core policy beliefs) to hit the government where it would hurt and create sustained pressure for future reform, we got, for the most part, isolated, ideologically driven political hyperbole aimed at creating a (failed) moral panic. The difference between this issue and Electric Yerevan is that reducing electricity prices is an easy policy to understand and support. Reforming institutional design within a divisive and unforgiving political environment is not so clear cut.

But we can definitely do better, and luckily many more policy windows will open up in the future which can be taken advantage of.

Situations like these are, first and foremost, opportunities for the public to learn about Armenia’s institutional design and to be better equipped to envision a tangible, pragmatic way toward a better future. This vision is essential to effecting change, and the media plays a critical role in educating the public and directing attention where it needs to be: on the tension between institutional independence from political influence and how legal and institutional design can be used to weigh the scales in favor of justice.

Political influence over cultural and academic institutions is a key governance challenge worldwide, and it is not necessarily determined by a country’s level of development. While some headlines imply Armenia’s system is turning into a dictatorship due to events like these, the United States has seen brutal repression of university students and professors protesting the genocide in Gaza. This is a clear example not only of the lack of independence in some of the world’s most prestigious academic institutions, like Ivy League college boards not supporting their own executives for political reasons, but also of a direct attack on citizens’ constitutional rights, instigated and supported by the highest levels of government. 

Just this year, the Premier of South Australia was criticized for putting pressure on organizers of the Adelaide Writer’s Festival via phone call to remove a Palestinian writer critical of Zionism. The incident sparked significant public and media backlash, ultimately leading to the festival’s cancellation. The Premier was embarrassingly shouted out of the building, subsequently threatened with litigation, and widely held responsible for the collapse of one of the country’s most respected literary events. He was put in his place, and I would dare say will not be making a call to “express the community’s concerns” to the board of another independent cultural body anytime soon. The point is that political influence over institutions isn’t a black-and-white problem, and some of the world’s most advanced democracies (South Australia is a very progressive state) still struggle, and will continue to struggle, to find the balance between institutional independence and political interference within statutory bodies connected to government. 

Knowing how governance systems work is crucial to being empowered to create change. A critical distinction that made the Premier’s attempted political influence at the Adelaide Writer’s Festival so fraught in “laid-back” Australia, was the explicit notion that this kind of political influence is a well-known no-go zone for politicians. Just as importantly, the cultural commitment to free speech can be especially strong in certain moments. Although the writer in question was dismissed from her position, the board eventually reinstated her due to public pressure, including other writers withdrawing from the festival and key board members, including the director, resigning. Sound familiar? She was then named the headline speaker at the Sydney Writer’s Festival, as a form of protest by the broader writing community, sending a message that they would not stand for restrictions on free speech. 

Lawmakers who created the Adelaide Festival Corporation, the statutory body responsible for the event, legislated with an awareness of the tension between institutional independence and political influence. The legislation builds in key protections based on the “Arm’s length” principle:

• An independent, skills-based appointed board.
• Delegated authority to the Artistic Director, with full authority over programming decisions (this is where the South Australian Premier tripped up).
• Fiduciary duties to the Corporation, not to the government, including operating only for its specific purpose (the AGMI’s purpose is intertwined with the government’s diplomatic engagements, creating a grey area).
• Constitutional conventions and governance norms which uphold independence.

Political interference is widely viewed as improper, even scandalous, and as a constant threat requiring public vigilance. Yet despite these safeguards, the board dismissed the writer in question and yielded to political pressure. The backlash was swift: the Australian public, alongside state and independent media, delivered a swift rebuke to those who transgressed, acting as key enforcement mechanisms for the prevailing culture of integrity and free speech. 

The good news is that in Armenia, many of these legislative protections are well understood and implemented. After 2018, the government established an anti-corruption body and pushed to decouple political authority from private economic control. These are positive signs that the system is seeking to reform itself to avoid reverting to less transparent governance, although the fight is far from won. The AGMI legally removed itself from the government in 2017, which was a strong decision and reflects institutional improvement and awareness of this tension. However, that shift didn’t diminish the legacy of preceding decades, when the AGMI was literally contained within the government not as a statutory body but as an extension of the Ministry of Education. This change is recent, less than a decade old, so while the framework has improved, making top-down political influence culturally unacceptable within it will still take time. Imagine working in one workplace culture your entire life and then being told to switch overnight to the opposite approach. That would be a difficult and lengthy process. 

Shifting Armenia’s institutional culture, shaped by decades of Soviet-era dictatorship, will likely take decades. This shift can happen faster if the media in Armenia and the diaspora provide context as issues arise, help us understand what we can do as individuals, and highlight which organizations are on the frontlines of these policy clashes that we can support, join, or fund. Each news story and event is an opportunity to refresh knowledge, strengthen civic education, and cultivate a well-informed and politically engaged populace.

It is clear that we genuinely care when the director of an academic institution is dismissed for political reasons, as we should. The next time it happens, we can be prepared not only with outrage, but with a strong foundation, prepared and equipped with an understanding of the issue’s history and the knowledge to act decisively while the window of opportunity is open. If change doesn’t happen this time, pressure for reform will build incrementally, the national dialogue will shift, and eventually, the dam will break.

Sources:

Baumgartner, F.R., Jones, B.D. and Mortensen, P.B. (2018) “Punctuated Equilibrium Theory: Explaining Stability and Change in Public Policymaking,” in Theories of the Policy Process, edited by C.M. Weible and P.A. Sabatier, Routledge. Fourth edition.
Cairney, P. (2020) Understanding Public Policy: Theories and Issues. Second Edition. London: Macmillan international higher education Red Globe Press.
Hassel, A. and Wegrich, K. (2022) “How to Do Public Policy”. Oxford University Press.
Herweg, N., Zahariadis, N. and Zohlnhöfer, R. (2018) “The Multiple Streams Framework: Foundations, Refinements, and Empirical Applications” in Theories of the Policy Process. edited by C.M. Weible and P.A. Sabatier, Routledge. Fourth edition. 

Opinion