The elevation of the “deal” as a governing metaphor – à la Donald Trump rhetoric – warrants more reflection. With it in its most visible form as seen under the US president, politics is framed as a sequence of transactions struck, won or closed, where success is measured by leverage and immediate gain, rather than institutional purpose or public interest. This recasts politics as a marketplace of short-term outcomes, rather than a system of sustainable accountability.
Politics has always involved negotiation. In its constructive form, negotiated compromise is embedded in political, constitutional and legal frameworks that ensure fairness and accountability. But in the way that Trump operates and talks, the “deal” becomes the organising principle of politics itself, judged not by whether problems are solved, but by whether a “win” can be claimed.
This logic is most visible in the political style associated with Donald Trump. In trade, alliances and diplomacy, outcomes are framed as winners and losers. The emphasis shifts from institutional durability to extracting advantage in each interaction.
This approach has disrupted longstanding diplomatic arrangements. Relations with traditional allies of the US have been reframed in transactional terms – especially around defence and trade – introducing uncertainty into commitments previously anchored in institutional trust. In the Middle East, for example, bilateral deal-making over multilateral frameworks has contributed to volatility, even where agreements have been reached.
A similar dynamic appears in South Africa and other parts of Africa, where coalition politics, procurement or state-business relations are sometimes treated as negotiable bargains, rather than rule-bound processes. The risk is not only inefficiency, but unequal shifting of power, rather than stable rules supposed to facilitate sustainable relations with supposed friends and foes.
This shift reflects a deeper change in how authority is exercised. Hungarian political economist Karl Polanyi argued¹ that exchange systems function best when embedded in institutional frameworks that strengthen and sustain trust and accountability – not immediate advantage to the more powerful.
Similarly, German sociologist and political economist Max Weber contended that fair authority rests on formal rules, rather than personal discretion². When this is bypassed, authority shifts from systems to individuals.
Institutions are often slow in the making – and vulnerable to failing – making procedural politics feel remote. Citizens facing economic strain or service breakdowns may favour leaders promising immediate action, whether viable or not. Transactional politics thrives in these conditions. But the risks intensify here. When institutional weakness creates demand for shortcuts, governance can slide into personalised power. When everything becomes negotiable, even the rules of governance appear conditional.
In practice, this shows up in the bypassing of procurement rules, unstable coalitions and executive decisions overriding institutional checks. This may produce short-term gains, but it weakens predictability, investor confidence and public trust. For example, in both Donald Trump’s presidential terms, frustration with gridlocked institutions – especially Congress – has been repeatedly leveraged to justify leader-driven action. Trade policy is a good example: Tariffs on Chinese imports have been framed less as part of a coherent trade regime, and more as leverage in negotiation. In foreign policy, Trump’s approach to North Korea has hinged on leader-to-leader engagement with Kim Jong-un, sidelining traditional diplomatic channels.
The appeal in these cases was immediacy: to bypass slow processes by getting a “deal”. But the downside is that policy became contingent on personal relationships and short-term bargains, with limited institutional anchoring. When leadership changed from Trump to Biden after the 2020 US presidential election, much of Trump’s deals proved reversible, showing how weakly embedded such “wins” were.
More durable leadership has looked different. Leaders like Nelson Mandela, Angela Merkel and Barack Obama framed politics as the stewardship of institutions – where outcomes are constrained by process, even at the cost of speed.
In South Africa, the Jacob Zuma era was a strong illustration of the “everything becomes negotiable” point; the Zondo Commission found that formal procurement systems and governance rules were routinely bypassed through networks of patronage and institutional erosion. As service delivery faltered and public trust declined, the space for transactional politics widened, reflected in personalised bargains rather than rule-bound processes.
The limits of deal-making become clearer in structural crises. Climate change, inequality, migration and infrastructure failure cannot be resolved through isolated bargains. They require institutional capacity, coordination and trust. Deals may settle disputes, but they often defer underlying problems.
Political scientists Fiona Adamson and Kelly Greenhill contend that while deal-making in international politics might displace underlying conflicts, it often does not resolve them over time³. “Deals” reframe politics as something to be completed in the moment, rather than governed over time.
The critique of deal-making does not mean defending slow process at all costs. Procedural paralysis is real in many government systems, but urgency without institutional integrity produces inconsistency and enables patronage. When governance becomes a sequence of ad hoc bargains, public authority weakens. To this end, German philosopher Jürgen Habermas⁴ argued that democratic legitimacy depends on public reasoning, rather than bargaining strength alone. When politics is reduced to deal-making, legitimacy becomes thinner.
Thus, negotiation will always remain part of politics. But when the “deal” has become the dominant metaphor, it has proven often to displace obligation, accountability and public purpose. Politics and international relations cannot function as a marketplace alone.
Conclusion: Restoring politics
By framing politics as “the art of the deal”, Donald Trump elevates winning over stewardship and leverage over legitimacy. Rules and institutions become obstacles rather than safeguards.
Accountable governance depends on rule-bound authority and non-negotiable constraints. Public officials are custodians of power, not free agents. Legal equality, constitutional order and institutional integrity cannot be traded without weakening governance itself.
Restoring balance does not mean abandoning negotiation, but re-anchoring it in rules: strengthening oversight, enforcing transparency and embedding agreements in institutional frameworks. Negotiation will always matter, but when it becomes synonymous with deal-making, it ceases to secure sustainable governance in any meaningful sense.
Chris Heymans is an independent public policy analyst based in Cape Town.
Notes
1. Karl Polanyi, The great transformation (1944).
2. Max Weber, Economy and society (1922).
3. Fiona Adamson, “Crossing borders …” (2006); Kelly Greenhill, Weapons of mass migration (2010).
4. Jürgen Habermas, Between facts and norms (1996).