As a nonpartisan nonprofit and independent think tank, we do not engage in politicking, lobbying or campaigning. Instead we provide resources for social change by functioning as a brain trust for animals, enhancing society’s ethical capacity to make good policy decisions about animals, and developing practical theories, concept and tools (e.g., compassionate conservation, spheres of wellbeing, animal trusteeship).
In these roles, PAN Works seeks enduring ethics-driven policy change for the wellbeing of other animals (hereafter, ‘animals’). We do this through the ethical reframing of animal public policy, while building the ethical capacity of individuals and society. We also cultivate the professional development of our think tank’s fellows to assume significant positions of public responsibility that positively affect animals. Because we are focused on changing the ethical foundation on which public policy for animals is built, our theory of change is adapted to that mission.
Root Problem
In our view the root problem is human supremacy. Variably framed as anthropocentrism, dominionism, human exceptionalism, and speciesism (to name four), human supremacy asserts a right of power over all other animals. This is expressed in all major arenas of human life, and is especially evident in our barbaric treatment of animals in agriculture and research, the commodification of companion animals, and the decimation of wild lives. All of these examples are presumed, embedded or enabled by public policies that facilitate harm done to animals, that, whatever its other characteristics, rests on a perverse moral justification.
Theory of Change
In response to this root problem, our theory of change rests on five propositions.
1. Politics is ethics writ large.
2. Moral values drive public policy.
3. Ethics and science triangulate to make the best public policy.
4. Policy is people.
5. People achieve ethical goals through institutions.
Ours is an intentional, deliberative approach to democracy and social changes for animals. Immediate interventions and mid-term campaigns are important, to be sure. Yet they are vulnerable to setbacks and reversal without an enduring change made to the ethics and culture in which policy decisions are made. Transformative change requires a more permanent foundation to be sustained. A deliberative approach engages individuals and institutions in a process of ethical education, reflection and revisioning about how we ought to live with other animals so that people, animals and nature may thrive together.
Unpacking our Theory of Change
Ethics and Politics. As Aristotle notes, politics is “ethics writ large.” Politics and policy are always interlaced with ethics and values. Moral values and theories, latent or explicit, are constitutive of political life and public policy. And all aspects of politics and policy have consequences, good or ill, for people, animals and nature.
Values Drive Policy. Human beings, in the words of philosopher Mary Midgley, are moral primates, and as such, we are particularly attuned to the moral dimensions of politics. These values ought to shape public policy, alongside the critical question of who will benefit or be harmed. Despite the overt wrangling over cost-benefit ratios, risk analysis, economic impacts, or rights and entitlements, ethical concerns are the core of policy disputes.
Public policy about animals is thus a wicked problem. As defined in the policy literature, wicked problems have no ready technical answer, and are instead the outcome of deep-seated conflicts over the ethics and their implications. In the animal space, this is most evident in the contending value paradigms of anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism that justify a wide spectrum of human-animal relations ranging from human supremacy to compassionate coexistence.
Triangulating Ethics and Science. It is for this reason that we need both ethics and science to triangulate on the best public policies for animals. Both are needed to distinguish between better versus worse public policy. By better we mean policies and associated practices that meet a test of strict scrutiny for their ethical justification and scientific evidence.
Ethics helps keep our values transparent and accountable. Science does the same for our claims about the facts. By bringing facts and values together in this way, they are not at loggerheads. Rather, they are complementary sources of information and insight to make the best policy decisions about animals.
Policy is People. That ‘policy is people’ is under appreciated. Too often ethics and animals are treated as a bloodless academic debate featuring dueling theories with little relevance to real world cases in all their contexts and complexities. Visioning, critiquing, implementing and refining public policy for animal wellbeing require people with both ethical commitment, preparation and training, as well as the scientific or professional knowledge appropriate to their specific task. This is not something that arises de novo in an organization. It is cultivated through professional development and placement of such individuals within institutions of governance broadly understood — the public, private as well as social sectors.
Institutional Change. So too, no matter the qualifications of the individuals involved, their efforts are both enabled and constrained by the institutions in which they operate. Policy environments hostile to animal wellbeing may frustrate even the best intended efforts of individuals. So institutions must be guided, reformed and transformed in order to do right by animals. This requires far more than discrete interventions or campaigns. It requires an ecosystem of aligned organizations capable of exercising political power and influence in order to change ethical values, worldviews, and policy narratives.
In our political moment, this includes organizations with various missions — advocacy, media, funding, law, politics, and business. Think tanks are indispensable to this. They are a bridge between academia and civil society, translating academic knowledge in the service of policy goals. They are also the brain trust of these aligned organizations, promoting and concretizing worldviews into policies through legislation, regulation, judicial decisions, executive action, as well as in support of mass mobilization.
Theories of Change and Change Theories
There is a key difference between theories of change for organizations, and the wide variety of broader change theories for society.
Our theory of change speaks to how we see ourselves bringing animal wellbeing to the forefront of the ethical, political and policy debate. This intersects, but is not the same, as those larger change theories that speak to how social change generally occurs in society.
Change theories are numerous and carry divergent implications. Theorized according to deviance, class, interests, identity, technology, materialism, idealism, elite influence, grassroots movements, and other criteria, they tend to pick out a singular feature of what makes for social change and generalize that to society as a whole. For example, Christian nationalists view social change primarily through the lens of deviance from religious absolutes. Class-based theories often conflict with those emphasizing individual interests or group identity, as they prioritize structural economic forces over personal motivations or cultural affiliations. Technology is frequently offered as a value-neutral explanation for social change, suggesting that innovation drives transformation regardless of human intentions. Meanwhile, materialists argue that change emerges from environmental and social struggles, while idealists contend that it results from evolving ideas and higher social aspirations.
Why we must choose any of these above all others is a misguided and counterproductive debate. We see the singular emphasis in and conflict between change theories as reductive and self defeating. Social change is a complex phenomenon driven by many factors. As an example, those promoting grass-roots models of social change are hamstrung if they don’t account for the power of elites to stop grassroots movements, let alone create top-down change through the power of governance. The reverse is equally true, so why not account for both?
We take a practical approach to change theories, looking for the insights that each provides, and applying those particular insights that best meet the context and characteristics of the social dynamics in question. More importantly, our own theory of change is framed within this practical approach. We don’t claim our five propositions to be the exclusive truth about how change occurs. We claim only that these propositions are indispensable to the value-laden and ethical aspects of change.
Further Reading
Our five propositions are backed by longstanding theoretical insight and empirical evidence on the role of ethics and values in public policy. The literature that speaks to this is interdisciplinary and draws from cognitive linguistics, cultural geography, ethics, hermeneutics, interpretive policy analysis, political theory, and social movement theory (for a start).
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Benton, T. (1993). Natural Relations: Ecology, Animal Rights and Social Justice. Verso.
Bevir, M., & Blakely, J. (2018). Interpretive Social Science: An Antinaturalist Approach. Oxford University Press, USA.
Callahan, D., & Jennings, B. (Eds.). (1983). Ethics, the Social Sciences, and Policy Analysis. Plenum.
Clark, S. R. L. (1998). The Political Animal: Biology, Ethics and Politics. Routledge.
Alasdair, Cochrane, & Mara-Daria, Cojocaru. (2024). Solidarity with Animals: Promises, Pitfalls, and Potential. Oxford University Press.
Donaldson, S., & Kymlicka, W. (2011). Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights. Oxford University Press.
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