Moving the goalposts

Suppose, you are the president of a mighty democratic country. You see that in a country with a very repressive regime on the other side of the world, the people rise in revolt and want to topple their regime. The revolt fails and the regime kills many of the rebels. You think: “My country is mighty and I can help them. If I kill their president, the people will rise again and now they’ll succeed and the country will become democratic.” So, you tell the whole world “I’ll bring a regime change over there.” And on your orders your secret service kills the president, but the people have become afraid and don’t have the courage to rise again and the new president chosen by the repressive regime is even harder in his actions against the opposition than his predecessor.
Now, you, the president of that mighty country, have a problem: In fact, the repressive regime hasn’t changed, except that the president has been replaced. The country is still as repressive as before and the country hasn’t become democratic, which was your goal by killing its president. However, if you would admit this, you, the mighty president, will have lost your face, so you tell the world: “Because of my action, a regime change has taken place in that country over there, for it has a new president.”

The case just described is an example of the fallacy “Moving the goal posts” (or MG, for short). Originally, the goal of the president of the mighty country was to make the country with the repressive regime democratic by killing its president. However, the anticipated scenario did not work. Therefore, now he told the world that his goal had always been to have the repressive president removed. He gave his goal “regime change” a new interpretation, of course, without admitting that he did. And such a thing is what we do when we move the goal posts. Wikipedia says it this way: “Moving the goal posts (or shifting the goal posts) … means to change the rule or criterion (‘goal’) of a process or competition while it is still in progress, in such a way that the new goal offers one side an advantage or disadvantage”. The advantage for the mighty president was that he saved his face (or so he thought). MG is a trick that is often used by this mighty president, but not only by this president but by many other politicians as well, mighty or not mighty, in both democratic and repressive countries. It’s a means for saving face and concealing mistakes.

Typically the “Moving the goal posts” fallacy is committed if:
1) Person A requests Person B to meet a certain goal (evidential or otherwise)
2) Person B fulfils the goal as stipulated above in step 1
3) Instead of admitting that Person B has met the goals or has discharged the conditions of the contract, Person A stipulates even further goals.
The name of the fallacy derives from football – if the goalposts for one team are moved farther away or closer, this can provide a (dis)advantage to the opposing team.
(from Source)

The example I started with is a special instance of MG in the sense that 1) the fallacy is (intentionally) applied to yourself: The mighty president has changed his own goal (as publicly declared) and 2) he has changed it because it has not been achieved. And that’s what politicians often do, for example, to save face. But in many cases it is so that someone sets a goal for another person, and after the latter has achieved it the former says: That was not what I said what you had to do; my order/request etc was… You can also say then that the rules, criteria or expectations have changed, after they had been set and after the action (or whatever is done to achieve them) has already started. It’s like changing the rules during the game.
The main characteristics of the MG fallacy are this altering of criteria, rules and expectations and persistent shifting; and often both together. For example in debates, a case of MG is challenging someone to prove a point, and when they do, rejecting it and demanding more proof; or instead of accepting the prove, ignoring it and shifting the argument to a new, broader, or irrelevant point. And that’s where you often find this fallacy: In debates, and – what is most visible to everybody – especially in political debates. But you find MG also in politics in general (cf. the case I started with) and in addition at the workplace, for example, when a manager sets a performance task and then changes it. Also the tactics of bullying behaviour include moving the goalposts: Setting objectives which subtly change in ways that cannot be reached. In workplace bullying, MG is a much-used tactic. (Wikipedia) Of course, MG is also a common phenomenon in everyday life. MG is typically used in bad faith to avoid admitting defeat or disadvantage. One solution seems to be setting clear rules and making clear agreements in advance (see Source, p. 187). But isn’t that just begging the question, especially if people who set the rules and must apply them act in bad faith, as so often happens?

Source
- Tuomas W. Manninen, “Moving the Goalposts”, in Bad Arguments, pp. 185-188.