A R T I C L E
.35
Anticipatory Governance: Traditions and
Trajectories for Strategic Design
Jose M. Ramos
Journal of Futures Studies
Taiwan
Over the course of the last half century, a number of practices were developed that connect
foresight with governance. From the early development of technological forecasting and anticipatory
democracy, to municipal and regional (local) approaches and futures commissions, to the more
recent development of transition management, integrated governmental foresight, and to the cuttingedge in networked/crowd sourced approaches, traditions and discourses that link foresight and
governance have evolved considerably. The purpose of this article is to review these various traditions
and discourses to understand the context within which different approaches can be valuable, and
expand the basis by which we can develop Anticipatory Governance strategies. Not all strategies are
appropriate in all contexts, however, a major proposition in this paper is that we can design strategy
mixes that can combine a number of traditions and discourse in creative ways that allow practitioners
to address complex, fuzzy and wicked challenges that singular approaches would have a harder time
addressing successfully.
governance, public policy, foresight, complexity, design
Introduction
One of the premises in this article is that societies face complex and wicked challenges, and
therefore there is no one approach that will be a silver bullet to address them. And further, there
is no one approach to linking foresight and governance that will effectively give a recipe for
how to do it in every instance. Indeed, the post-structural turn in futures studies (Inayatullah,
1998; Slaughter, 1999) puts forward the proposition that traditions and discourses structure
the very way that we we see a problem; and therefore, to address the challenge of developing
strategies and approaches to Anticipatory Governance for speciic concerns, we can draw on
a number of traditions and discourses as a “strategy mix”. In essence this paper puts forward
Anticipatory Governance (AG) as a post-structural design challenge.
Journal of Futures Studies, September 2014, 19(1): 35-52
Journal of Futures Studies
Instrumental rationality in the 20th century has shown us that one man’s miracle
creation can create a cascade of complex problems. From the development of the
irst nuclear bomb, to the automobile, the use of pesticides and the green revolution,
and now the throes of the digital revolution, instrumental rationality provides
solutions that then generate a new complex set of problems. Or as Ulrich Beck
argued, we inhabit a world risk society in which the output of industrial growth is
not just wealth and technological innovation, but also uncertainty and risk (Beck,
1999). Bertrand de Jouvenel (1967) made a similar point more than half a century
ago, that it is because of “progress” that forecasting is needed. As we accelerate
change in our societies (in particular technological change), the future becomes
less certain and difficult to forecast, creating the necessity to understand the
potential consequences and implications of change, and feed this back into wiser
decision making. From the well organized mess of instrumental rationality, more
comprehensive or holistic ways of addressing the human and social experience
have been developed that are context conscious (Gunderson, 2002). To this extent,
futures studies, or the systematic application of foresight to understand and enact
social change, fundamentally must incorporate complexity into its approaches. A
complexity oriented approach, however, is not just one where dynamic systems
are mapped, but also where the wickedness of contemporary challenges can be
de-fanged by understanding and analyzing how traditions and discourses frame
the world we see around us – an the opportunities and strategies we can follow.
De Jouvenel’s idea for a “Surmising Forum” was in fact an early example of
such an approach to complexity, where various social sciences and knowledge
traditions would come together to collaborate on social anticipation that could guide
public and governmental decision making (a very early example of Anticipatory
Governance). The following discussion of traditions and discourses is offered as
a “post-instrumental” design space that is meant to facilitate our engagement and
capacity to employ Anticipatory Governance approaches.
Traditions and Discourses for Anticipatory Governance
In this next section I present an overview of seven traditions and discourses for
Anticipatory Governance. This provides a starting point within which to understand
AG as a broad domain of activity, and to analyze different approaches. This analysis
in the following section will provide a basis for a discussion on strategy mixing and
design in the context of addressing foresight to social response challenges.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
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Science, Technology and Innovation Foresight (STIF)
Anticipatory Democracy (AD)
Futures Commissions (FC)
Foresight Informed Strategic Planning (FISP)
Transition Management (TM)
Integrated Governmental Foresight (IGF)
Network Foresight (NF)
While other categorizations are possible, this list of seven emerged from a broad
scan of the literature while designing and implementing a course on Foresight for
Public Policy at the Lee Kuan Yee School of Public Policy. Of the seven, three are
explicitly self-conscious as traditions, (such as anticipatory democracy, science
Anticipatory Governance: Traditions and Trajectories for Strategic Design
technology and innovation foresight and transition management). Integrated
governmental foresight is newer, but with some strong similarities across case
examples. Futures commissions are a particular organizational strategy. Network
foresight is recent, but it is distinctive and there is a consistent and overlapping
body of examples. Finally, foresight informed strategic planning is perhaps the most
ambiguous category - yet the prevalence of small-scale foresight informed planning
exercises for local and state / provincial governments is widespread.1
Science, Technology, Innovation Foresight
Science, technology and innovation foresight (STIF) programs are perhaps
the oldest form of formal foresight activity for governments. Starting in the 1960s,
such programs were developed to guide large scale allocation of research resources
and funding toward those research and development areas, often in the interstices
between scientific research and industry-based commercialization, that were
considered to have the greatest potential or were a matter of national strategic
interest. Examples of STIF programs include the US Critical Technologies Program,
French Key Technologies Programme, Czech Foresight Exercise, UK Technology
Foresight Programme, Technology Foresight Towards 2020 in China and Japan’s
long-standing MITI Technology Forecasting. They have been fundamentally
connected to supporting national innovation systems. They entail a process of high
level policy and priority setting which are “designed to inform Science, Technology
and Innovation (STI) decision-making around the world” (Miles, 2012). Or in
Georghiou and Harper’s (2010) characterization:
“The predominant focus of foresight is frequently national research
policy and strategy, usually with the broad aim of selecting priorities for
research investments.” (Georghiou, 2011, p.243)
Because this type of futures research entails understanding the development
of science and technology in specialist domains, STIF often uses expert based
approaches to futures research such as Delphi forecasting. Yet, STIF focused
foresight has in some cases broadened to encompass systemic social concerns
(Urashima, 2012) and connecting stakeholders in STIF processes for coordinated
exploration and articulation of strategic foresight. Miles (2012) explains how STIF
approaches have evolved recently to incorporate more systemically complex, wicked
(problem) and participatory approaches to exploring technology forecasting. He
characterized more recent approaches as “fully-ledged foresight” which:
“Combined prospective analysis (futures studies’ insistence on the
importance of relating present choices to awareness of long term future
prospects, and of the need to pay due regard to agency, uncertainty,
and the associated scope for alternative futures), with a participatory
orientation (paying due regard to the dispersion of knowledge and agency
across multiple stakeholders, whose insights and engagement need to
be mobilised), and a practical relevance (being closely related to actual
decision making and strategy formation actions...” (Miles, 2012, p.71)
Miles ranking of priorities and objectives for STIF programs around the world
revealed that such approaches have evolved considerably since their beginnings:
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Journal of Futures Studies
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Orienting policy formulation and decisions
Supporting STI strategy- and priority-setting
Fostering STI cooperation and networking
Generating visions and images of the future
Triggering actions and promoting public debate
Recognising key barriers and drivers of STI
Identifying research/investment opportunities
Encouraging strategic and futures thinking
Helping to cope with Grand Challenges (Miles, 2012, p.72)
Anticipatory Democracy
The term “Anticipatory Democracy” came from the seminal futurist Alvin
Tofler, as his solution to what he considered to be “future shock”. Because Tofler
considered anticipated changes to be so disruptive, he argued for large-scale citizen
engagement in diagnosing change and influencing society. As Bezold (2006)
explains:
“The simplest definition of anticipatory democracy ... is that it is a
process for combining citizen participation with future consciousness”
(Bezold, 1978 in Bezold, 2010). [He] “argued that representative
government was the key political technology of the industrial era and that
new forms must be invented in the face of the crushing decisional overload,
or political future shock, that we faced.” (Bezold, 2006, p.39)
38
Anticipatory democracy (AD) developed in the 1970s in the United States.
Bezold (1978) documented dozens of projects across the United States which
engaged citizens, community leaders (business owners, religious, networks,
community organizations), and policy makers in processes of formulating policy
development and political direction in the context of emerging futures. Some of the
processes would engage hundreds of citizens (in a few cases thousands) within a
state or region, thus enacting a large scale participatory development of alternative
futures and visions, which would leads to policy preferences and budget priorities in
the style of participatory democracy.
But AD shouldn’t simply be seen as having purely US origins. Indeed, the
development of the World Future Studies Federation in the late 1960s contained
aspirations for democratizing knowledge and capacity in futures thinking. Eminent
scholars and WFSF founders, such Robert Jungk with the development of future
workshops (Jungk, 1987), Johan Galtung’s Transcend Method, and Fred Polak’s
(1961) work, further developed by Elise Boulding (Boulding, 1978), provided
impetus for citizen engagement in understanding and envisioning change and
deliberating on new directions. AD can be seen as part of a broader critique of
representative democracy in the face of the rising social complexity that could not
be absorbed or effectively address by representative systems of governance (Dator,
2007).
One of the key points of dynamism and challenge with the process such as
this, is the deep diversity it engenders in the process. People with very different
values come together in a public deliberation on futures. Tensions and conlicts are
inevitable, or as Bezold argues:
Anticipatory Governance: Traditions and Trajectories for Strategic Design
“many individuals live within levels or memes that do not value those
at other levels. Becoming conscious of these levels will be important for
enhancing effective democracy.” (Bezold, 2006, p.49)
Bezold therefore argues that making AD work requires making values explicit
through foresight tools and techniques that deal with social complexity, perception,
values and worldviews (e.g. using Causal Layered Analysis, Integral Theory, etc.)
And in this process to build common ground between participants for a shared
vision.
On a more pragmatic basis, Baker’s analysis (Bezold, 2006, p.39) of success
criteria for anticipatory democracy projects included the following important points:
1. Obtain adequate funding ($100,000USD per year in the mid 1970s – or about
$360,000 USD in 2005 dollars)
2. Face political realities;
3. Decide on the major research/goals topics early;
4. Build ties with the bureaucracy;
5. Design and implement a process that involves policy makers from the start;
6. And present indings early and throughout the life of the process.
Futures Commissions
Futures commissions (FC) are another important tradition in the Anticipatory
Governance milieu. Futures commissions are semi-independent research and
communication institutes or agencies established to provide a foresight function
for both government and the public. A key opportunity in FCs is to develop futures
research which can inluence policy development as well as communicate with the
public to enhance the level of debate in the public sphere. Often government-funded,
their semi-independent nature (as a commission) allows them more liberty in
providing critical commentary within both policy development processes and public
discourse. This semi-independence can also become a weakness if political winds
change and those in power are at odds with the research and communication lowing
from such a futures commission. As Bezold argued, they can be both powerful
and precarious, “critical in giving government greater foresight, more conscious
direction setting, and greater capacity to create positive change” - or can waste
public money (Bezold, 2006, p.46).
Notable examples of such commissions include Australian FC (now defunct),
and Swedish FC. Bezold (2006) documented 36 US states that created FCs since the
1990s, often within particular state judiciaries. He characterized their function to:
“stimulate imagination and creativity in considering options; track
emerging trends and relate these trends to current policies; develop
alternative scenarios; inform and involve the public and key stakeholders;
and allow the public to link policy options and trends to priority setting for
state policies and the budget.” (Bezold, 2006, p.47)
Overall FCs are high impact but require significant resources and political
support. Their success factors include having strong leadership support (e.g. a
governor, chief justice), involving other key stakeholders, including the legislature
and media,
and having public learning and public involvement components (Bezold, 2006).
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Journal of Futures Studies
Usually of a robust scale, built into states or federal funding, FCs can also be
instantiated at smaller scales, such as inter-organizational networks.2 As well they
can be used to connect a number of different jurisdictions through intergovernmental
commissions. Their frequency and flexibility warrant their inclusion as a critical
strategy in developing Anticipatory Governance.
Integrated Governmental Foresight
Over the past decade or so, a new approach to Anticipatory Governance has been
developed which integrates intelligence and foresight activities across governmental
departments, harnessing synergies and overlaps toward systemic policy insights.
While still broadly focused on national priorities and challenges, “public health,
national security, or the environment,” [etc] (Habegger, 2010, p.50) this mode of
foresight activity cuts across traditional policy areas and departments, and puts a
premium on cooperation and collaboration across departments. It typically requires
large scale knowledge management systems for scanning databases and subsequent
analysis, and can be considered a limited type of organizational “crowd sourcing”.
Its end purpose is to assists policy makers with strategic thinking and decisionmaking. Habegger (2010) analyzed three important examples of this mode of
foresight activity (UK, Netherlands, Singapore), arguing:
“Only few contemporary challenges can be conined to one policy area
anymore, and governments have realized that a single-issue focus is in
many instances insuficient. Consequently, they have started to experiment
with foresight that cuts across the traditional boundaries of policy areas and
government departments.” (Habegger, 2010, p.50)
While such an approach to governmental foresight has distinct instrumental
advantages, for example the Singapore government’s Risk Assessment and Horizon
Scanning (RAHS) program’s capacity to identify early warning signs of potential
risk, Habegger argues that the cultural benefits of this approach are perhaps even
deeper, where process-based foresight among inter-organizational learning networks
create conditions for cultural change toward adaptive and agile policy development.
Such approaches foster cross-departmental sharing and collaboration, building in
a culture of learning networks and organizations, breaking down traditional silos
among government areas. Or as Habegger articulated IGF is:
“characterized by a long-term, interdisciplinary, participative, and
communicative perspective that attempts to build networks across
professional communities, enables broad-based social learning, generates
scenario-based knowledge, and eventually results in visions of (alternative)
policies.” (Habegger, 2010, p.50)
40
A precursor to integrated governmental foresight may also be noted in
early experiments with what Bezold (2006) describes as “legislative foresight”.
Experiments in the US at the federal level in integrating futures studies approaches
into legislative processes attempted to build in environmental scanning and
forecasts that could have implications for existing legislation, as well as foster
coordination across legislative committees to look at intended and unintended
future consequences of legislation: to establish more coordinated and coherent
Anticipatory Governance: Traditions and Trajectories for Strategic Design
national policies. As such legislative foresight played a kind of oversight function
on all legislative activity (Bezold, 1978, p.124 in Bezold, 2006). While this kind
of legislative foresight is distinctly different to IGF described by Habegger, it still
holds signiicant potential for those considering a broad strategy mix and designing
Anticipatory Governance approaches.
Transition Management
Transition management (TM) is a long term/multi-generational and systemic
strategy for reaching sustainable development goals and visions. It engages and
empowers diverse stakeholders in a wicked problem area, or what is termed in TM
discourse as an ‘Arena’, focused on targeting and engaging key domains or wicked
issues. As an approach employed by governments to enact sustainable development
goals, a key strategy entails creating a pioneer social innovator group that has
political sanction to formulate change initiatives. In this way it draws on a synergy
between governmental champions and pioneer social innovator groups or networks
(it uses outsiders and insiders as an emerging alliance of change agents). The TM
change strategy entails initiating “seeds of change” at a local level that can be
scaled up (which serves the dual purpose of mitigating the risks of over generatized
policy doctrine and developing experiments that provide long term resilience). It is
quintessentially a strategic foresight approach where global scanning is conducted
but applied to local sustainability challenges, and thus it takes advantage of the
emerging global knowledge commons for localized applications. It links a long
term understanding of alternative futures with shorter term policy and development
priorities.
“By building up a broadening network of diverse actors that share the
debate, thinking and experimenting, conditions are created for up-scaling
of innovation and breakthrough of innovations. We will argue that this is
at the heart of transition management: by actually implementing transition
management in a structured co-production process, new insights emerge,
are implemented and relected upon in a continuing way”. (Loorbach, 2010,
p.238)
Transition management makes a distinction between different temporal levels
of social change and opportunities for action. At the strategic level, long-term
sustainability challenges and alternative futures are explored, connected to complex
and wicked social problems - futures studies as an approach for generating new
strategic visions, preferred futures and pathways is the methodology par excellence.
At the tactical level, TM applies itself toward rethinking key system structures
“institutions, regulation, physical infrastructures, inancial infrastructures” within the
context of broader sustainability challenges. At the operational level, TM attempts
to generate new activities, decisions and innovations that individuals and groups
can generate on a day-to-day basis in order to inluence tactical change, but in the
context of broader strategic foresight (Loorbach, 2010, p.238). As can be seen from
this explanation, TM is unique in its strategy and methodology in terms of linking
the very long-term sustainability challenges we face with specific and focused
“operational” scale interventions and actions.
The transition management cycle is reminiscent of action learning and action
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Journal of Futures Studies
research cycles, but where localized action recurs in the context of the movement
toward long-term sustainability goals and visions. Is highly synthetic and its
incorporation of elements of the action research cycle works across diverse
stakeholder and participant conigurations looking for leverage points of change and
insight. The formulation of a problem context or “transition arena” may be followed
by generating images of sustainability and transition paths, which then lows into
transition experiments in the mobilization of transition networks, which is then
evaluated and relected upon, the recursion of which provides the basis for a new
cycle (Loorbach, 2010, p.238).
“The very idea behind transition management is to create a societal
movement through new coalitions, partnerships and networks around arenas
that allow for building up continuous pressure on the political and market
arena to safeguard the long-term orientation and goals of the transition
process.” (Loorbach, 2010, p.239)
Foresight-informed strategic planning
At different levels of government, from local to states and federal, a large body
of practice and literature relates to planning processes that are informed by strategic
foresight approaches. If a government is considering a planning process that will
have implications for 5, 10, or 20 years, often they will apply some type of foresight
approach to informing the planning process. Such foresight informed planning
processes are most often participatory – which engage key stakeholders in a locale
that might represent the broader system) in order to discuss the long-term issues
being mutually experienced. It employs workshop based approaches to foresight and
requires expert facilitators and facilitation. There are a wide variety of approaches to
foresight informed planning, including search conference methods (Ludema, 2002;
Weisbord, 1992), scenario planning (Mahmud, 2011) and others.
Gould and Daffara (Gould, 2007, p.2) articulate the value of foresight for
planning and engaging a community in decision-making, providing participants with
a deepened understanding of social change trajectories, providing an opportunity
for participants to articulate and imagine their preferred futures, and to foster
action plans and processes that can get integrated into achieving the futures that
participants prefer. Further they argue that such approaches allow for greater
transparency through open communication and involvement, where existing
assumptions about the future can be made more explicit, challenged and evaluated,
as well as creating opportunities for collaboration across government and citizen
boundaries. Such processes bring forth new talents among people, surface existing
issues and conlicts for resolution, develop the community’s capacity to question
assumptions and builds hope among people. For government such processes allow
policies to be informed by a deeper understanding of long-term change, deepen the
rigor of existing planning schemes, help develop collaborations across sectors and
provide opportunities to integrate policy (Gould and Daffara, 2007, p.3).
Network Foresight
42
The most recent development, Network Foresight (NF), involves approaches
that use networked ICT systems on web based, open, “web 2.0” style interactive
Anticipatory Governance: Traditions and Trajectories for Strategic Design
platforms. Some of these engage in crowdsourcing and collective intelligence
(principle of the wisdom of crowds). Others employ large scale scanning systems
and interactive processes for idea generation and visioning. TechCast, developed
by William Halal, was one of the irst forms of collaborative virtual expert based
forecasting. Shaping Tomorrow has become the biggest user group for crowdsourced
trends. iknow is the European Union’s collective scanning and analysis system.
Finpro is one of the best examples of organizational crowdsourcing of foresight
data, where employees form an important part of the scanning capacity that leads
to business / industry intelligence. The Institute for the Future also run a variety of
Massively Multi-player Online Games (MMOGs) which engage thousands of people
in creatively engaging with scenarios and situations. The Open Foresight Project,
created by Venessa Miemis, was an open source project, relying on off the shelf
social media platforms, to conduct social foresight inquiry. FutureScaper, created
by Noah Raford, is a scenario planning platform that uses crowdsourcing and
collaborative interaction. Each of these, and other notable examples unmentioned
here, have experienced different levels of success in engaging online audiences in
foresight processes. Because this form of engagement is still young, it is expected
to develop significantly in the years to come (Ramos, 2012). Network Foresight
approaches are part of a broader shift into a network intensive era, typified by a
number of key changes. Eight of these key changes are highlighted here:
1. Funding – NT can draw on public / distributed crowd-funding opportunities
2. Audience – NT can engage a global public citizen sphere of interest
3. Legitimacy – peer publics become moderators of the validity of anticipatory
truths
4. Instantiation – activity can be highly localized, swarms or lash mobs, using
mobile networking for instantaneous or improvisational self organization
5. Replication – NT platforms can be copied or franchised from one locale to
many
6. Participation – NT can engage a broad public
7. Ownership – as citizens become key contributors there is an emerging
expectation for a global knowledge commons (e.g. “it belongs to all”)
8. Transparency – contributors want foresight approaches to be ‘naked’, that is,
the process should be open for people to understand, critique, replicate, etc.
(Ramos, 2012)
There are some similarities to Integrated Governmental Foresight (IGF), as IGF
strategies usually employ large scale and robust ICT system to coordinate knowledge
sharing and management. IGF approaches usually differ, however, because they are
‘in-house’ systems that are closed off from wider internet participation. Network
Foresight is generally open to anyone who has the capabilities to contribute.
For example the Singapore government’s RAHS system uses a sophisticated
crowdsourced data development strategy. However, it remains closed to all except
a select few organizations outside of government, with little intention to engage a
global audience in participatory sensing and analysis.
Analysis across 5 design factors
This next section provides a brief analysis of each of the traditions/practices
for AG. The choice for analytic categories was made on the basis of the key
considerations that foresight practitioners may have when designing an AG approach
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Journal of Futures Studies
for a specific context – e.g. a government, community or agency. The analytic
approach here is designed to help facilitate ield practitioners’ capacity to consult
and design AG strategies for a wide variety of potential needs. The categories listed,
however, are only a starting point, and a number of other design factors could be
added to this list.
Purpose/Rationale - this factor concerns the over arching rationale for using a
particular approach.
People/Participation - this factor concerns the types of people, levels of diversity
and institutional culture that may pervade a particular approach.
Scale/Geography - this factor concerns the geographic scope and scale of the
approach.
Complexity/Wickedness - this factor concerns the level of complexity or
wickedness that a particular approach is able to grapple and achieve success with.
Viable System Model - this factor concerns the dynamics between subsystems
within the Viable System Model.
In order for a community or organization to respond to the wicked nature
of change and complexity in the modern world, a requisite capacity to cognize
and respond to the nature of such change is required. Within an organization or
community there must be a capacity for developing foresight. Drawing on the work
of Stafford Beer, Hayward (2003) applied the Viable System Model (VSM) in
considering organizational foresight capacity. The requisite cognition for foresight
and adaptive change is a “meta-system” composed of 3 primary parts: the first
holds the identity (intention/purpose) of an organization or community, the second
provides the awareness of the contextual environments and how it is changing
(intelligence), the third (control) translates both of these into effective strategies for
action.
Figure 1. VSM Meta-system
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Foresight functions differ across these 3 subsystems in the meta system. The
System 5 function of purpose and identity requires developing visions of preferred
futures that resonate strongly with people’s values and aspirations. The System 4
function of intelligence requires research and environmental scanning that identiies
Anticipatory Governance: Traditions and Trajectories for Strategic Design
critical emerging issues that could impact on people and the organization. The
System 3 function of control requires the development of strategies that will allow
the overall system to translate aspirations into realities within a landscape of socioecological change.
The proposition here is that for an organization, or indeed a social system, to
be viable long term, it needs to develop these 3 subsystems, and engender some
coherence across them toward meta-systemic alignment. Anticipatory Governance
can thus be seen through these distinctions – where there is a need to develop 3
anticipatory capabilities (vision, intelligence and strategy) with coherence and
alignment.
Table 1. Analysis of seven Anticipatory Governance practices using ive design factors
Scale /
Geography
STIF National
Purpose /
Rationale
People /
Complexity /
Participation Wickedness
VSM
Competitiveness,
Gov.
Growth,
Research and
Industrial
Commerce
Development
Research community
Medium – while
provides system 4 in
change is complex,
unchallenged system
specialization is
5 priorities (economic
used as wedge
growth, etc.)
Inclusion,
Democracy,
Response,
Innovation
High – diversity
Engaged Citizens
can lead to synergy do system 4 and
or problems
challenge system 5
AD
State /
Province
FC
System 4 outsourced
Research,
Modest –
Advisory,
Varied
to FC – disrupts
National to
Communication, Media, Policy specialized away
existing system 5 and
Circles
from other systems
Departmental and Advocacy
3 in gov
Policy and
Learning and
Policy Design for Research
Communities
Wickedness
IGF
National
TM
Preigurative
Hyper-local
Social / Tech
Alliance with
Innovation for
State
Sustainability
Strategically
FISP Local or State Robust City and
State Planning
NF
Local-Global
Diverse Civil
Society
Virality, Scale,
Disruption
Potential,
Diversity?
High – issue
complexity across
policy areas –
opportunity for
wicked policy
design
High – complex
Local Pioneers innovation but
with Gov.
uses locality to
Champions
create possibility
of scalability
System 4 shared
across gov. dept.,
accepts existing
system 5 with some
capacity to challenge
New mini system 5-43 “spiked” through
gov-citizen alliance
Locals support
Planners with Medium – depends
development of
People
on approach
system 4 and 5
System 4 dispersed
Design Geeks,
Unsure – depends
across netizens,
Facilitators
on shared meaning
and Netizens
advise system 5
Synthesis Proposals
The analysis reveals a great diversity of approaches to Anticipatory Governance,
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Journal of Futures Studies
some of their fundamental differences and other similarities. What is clear is that the
best strategy to use depends greatly on context, needs and aims. Given the diverse
traditions and trajectories for Anticipatory Governance, how do these become
a resource for designing innovative Anticipatory Governance approaches and
strategies for clients?
In order to demonstrate a strategy mixing and design approach, I detail four
hypothetical synthetic proposals for Anticipatory Governance. While these will be
in sketch form, I hope to demonstrate how these traditions and discourses can be
utilized in complementary ways to address unique contextual needs.
The four synthetic proposals for AG include strategies for:
1. A Foresight Enabled Nimble Community
2. A User-led State Government System
3. A National Liquid Foresight System
4. A Global Foresight Commons
Strategy for a Foresight Enabled Nimble Community
Nimble community addresses the needs of a small regional town of
approximately 80,000 people. The town is facing a number of emerging issues and
sustainability challenges: the impact of climate change, immigration and ethnic
diversity, deindustrialization, and shifting cultural values. The clients want an
approach that will allow their townsfolk to adapt nimbly to change, rather than be
overwhelmed by it. Using a hybrid approach, the following elements are designed
in. The city government comes together with an alliance of local community groups
and businesses concerned about their futures. Several project officers are funded
to build in a foresight meta-system for the community. An anticipatory democracy
(AD) style public event is held to engage as many community members as possible
in both considering social change in articulating preferred futures. Participants,
businesses and groups as well as government employees are invited onto a social
networking platform (NF) that allows them to interact and provide ongoing
input into the foresight meta-system, and asks them to provide their scans and
intelligence in terms of what is an emerging issue for their community. Using lowcost videoconferencing technology, a modiied Delphi approach is employed where
experts in particular relevant domains of change are invited to provide ideas and
do Q&As on a month-to-month basis (STIF). The project oficers help sustain the
public engagement on the one hand (events etc.), and on the other hand write short
foresight reports that can inform local planning (FISP). Finally, project oficers play
the role of facilitators in connecting people who want to act as social innovators
and change agents in particular areas of concern, who may cut across business,
government and community groups (TM).
Strategy for a User-led State Foresight System
46
A state government facing a number of long-term challenges, rapid population
growth, the environmental impacts of primary industry (forestry and mining),
infrastructure challenges due to the large size of the state, high exposure to global
economic conditions, and dramatic changes to the way in which younger generations
want to engage with government. Policies crafted in one department are often at
odds with priorities in other departments, leading to inter-departmental wrangling.
Anticipatory Governance: Traditions and Trajectories for Strategic Design
Young people seem to be more engaged with social change than the government.
The client wants a new way of generating cross-departmental intelligence, as well as
including and engaging citizens in issue identiication and local problem-solving.
First, an integrated governmental foresight (IGF) approach is applied to all
departments. An extensive training and education program is conducted to build in
scanning and analysis capabilities in each department. Civil servants are expected
to make regular contributions to environmental scanning or analysis in particular
issue areas. Analysis is done in small teams within particular departments, which
is channeled upward to create a broader whole of government analytic capability
that informs planning (FISP). Learning days are developed to facilitate crossdepartmental sharing of knowledge and resources. Internal foresight capability
teams are allowed to roam across a number of departments to improve capacity. The
web platform used for inter departmental scanning and analysis also doubles as a
platform by which citizens can comments and contribute to issue areas (IGF+NF).
The foresight process is “naked” and can be viewed by citizens who want to learn
about the issues and test their relevance to their lives and localities. Anticipatory
democracy (AD) style events are held to bring the most motivated members of the
community together. The AD events help to educate citizens about how they can
support government intelligence capabilities, but also as a way of organizing into
citizen-government teams for anticipatory policy development, visioning and social
innovation (TM).
Strategy for a National Liquid Foresight System
A national government is facing a variety of challenges in both understanding
the complex nature of emerging internal challenges, as well as facilitating a national
conversation on the policies that can effectively address these. Many people want
deeper involvement in speciic areas of national policy, that go far beyond voting in
a representative system. In addition online engagement and activism has become a
norm.
Drawing on peer to peer technology and drawing lessons from the Liquid
Democracy experiments currently underway in Germany and elsewhere, where a
person can either vote for a policy themselves (direct democracy) or can allocate
their vote to a third person (a transitive delegation), a robust interactive system is
designed to facilitate inter-activity, collective intelligence making and collaborative
problem solving.3
A national platform provides a place where citizens can contribute their
understanding of challenges, weak signals and emerging issues. Moderators play
the role of connecting the details of people’s contributions to point toward emerging
thematic concerns. Using an action research practice, these thematic concerns are
fed back to people to find out if the interpretation was useful, and how it should
be changed. Once an issue has been effectively diagnosed as requiring some
conversation, the system allows and facilitates localized face to face conversations
to take place nationally on those diagnosed topics. Like a meetup.com system, the
platform allows citizens to establish pop up town hall style meetings to discuss the
issue areas. Using AD style processes, people interested in an issue area can meet in
person, and form teams of people that will work on deepening their understanding
of the issue. While these are localized conversations, the national web platform
provides a space to develop collective intelligence on the issue by allowing the
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Journal of Futures Studies
localized groups and people to debate and dialog the issue across geographic
regions.
After the collective intelligence process establishes a variety of action items,
which are either policy alternatives or social/technical innovations, a liquid
democracy process proceeds where all citizens are able to engage in the liquid
system to vote on their preferred responses to those items. Those items that win, the
top 20% or so, are slated for more formal deliberation or adoption. Even if items are
not selected through the liquid democracy system, they can be taken up by citizens
connected by the national platform and acted upon. The system thus facilitates
diverse localized and meta-localized responses within agreed upon issue areas of
national concern, enabling social adaptation and resilience through experimentation.
Strategy for a Global Foresight Commons
48
This is perhaps the most important design challenge of our era. Humanity faces
a litany of serious challenges – biospheric ecological degradation, wealth and power
stratification, 21st century technologies, and many other issues – some of which
represent existential threats, others opportunities. So far a planetary scale sensing
and analytic foresight function has been undertaken by pockets of enlightened
activity, some community based work, among elements in academia, independent
research institutions, and other locales.4 The UN and especially UNESCO have
played an important role in this regard. More recently prominent voices have
begun to voice a much more ambitious vision for a planetary foresight function.
Dumain proposed the idea of a Global Foresight Commons (GFC), a transnational
cooperative system between governments, businesses, community and research
organizations around the world.5 Clearly it is an idea whose time has come, yet it
is a serious design challenge. Here I use the seven approaches to AG described in
this article as design elements that can be used in developing a global foresight
commoning system:
With governments and philanthropic groups contributing monies to a central
coordinating and implementation body, a robust inter-governmental organization is
created to facilitate the development of an integrated trans-governmental foresight
(ITGF) program. The system is opened to a variety of organizations who do
foresight related work, and who can contribute to the data and analysis across a
variety of issues, as well as use the data for their own analysis and policy needs.
The general rule is, to use the commons, build the commons. All participating
organizations are required to build the common pool of usable foresight knowledge
and capacity to grow the pie. The program is directed to create a culture and capacity
for knowledge sharing, collaborative analysis and join formulation of transnational
policy options. The challenge is formidable: it must overcome language barriers,
entrenched national interests, cultural differences and the like. Yet the potential
beneits are tangible – more effective policies yielding results on issues (like climate
change) that are currently overwhelming isolated and ad hoc policy efforts.
The program moves on to deepen the GFC platform by building an extensive
Network Foresight (NT) platform that allows for layers of participatory global
engagement. Drawing on the groundbreaking work of the Institute for the Future,
a series of online foresight games of various types engage, at first, hundreds of
thousands of people a year, and later millions of players. The engagements support
Anticipatory Governance: Traditions and Trajectories for Strategic Design
key strategic areas developed by the ITGF program, providing valuable and
diverse data and community building. Of the millions of players that engage with
the gaming system, some choose to be part of more ambitious global scanning
teams that contribute and analyze weak signals and provide grounded and translocalized sensing capacity. Drawing on the big ideas from the games and analysis
teams, others form institutionally supported transition-innovation teams, drawing
on transition management (TM) methodology, to create solutions for chronically
entrenched situations, such as: discriminatory poverty in India, the high carbon
footprint of Australians, the imperial dynamics of US foreign policy, demand side
dynamics in the Mexican drug war, and many other issues and areas slated as
strategic locales for experimentation and innovation.
But how to transcend the entrenched legacy of economic growth and interstate
rivalry within and between states, and develop a collaborative policy development
approach?
An anticipatory democracy platform is developed to allow people within the
GFC eco-system to interact and self-organize through virtual as well as regional and
global meetings. These congresses contain democratic processes for both choosing
policy priorities and innovations, and electing representatives accountable for
instrumentalizing change through a Global Foresight Commission (FC). This Global
Foresight Commission is situated between the GFC system and participating states,
and plays the role of a strong advocate for coordinated policy and innovation in
areas identiied by members as strategic levers of change.
Conclusion
While it may be visionaries, macro-historians and artists that glimpse our futures
before others (Inayatullah, 2008; Molitor, 2010), if the insights and wisdom of these
few cannot support a broader engagement in social adaptation and transformation
in the face of the challenges we collectively face, then their strange and marginal
lives are further diminished. Lying underneath the “how to” of futures studies,
with its many methodologies and epistemological debates, is the question of “for
what”, and deeper still, the “why”. One of the critical “whys” can be simply stated
as, the capacity and ability for social groups to respond to change in effective and
meaningful ways.
Without a “foresight function” (Hayward, 2003), how can any group at any scale
have any chance of survival and success through the millennia? We would have to
assume a completely static reality, a steady-state social system and environment.
A review of history reveals this expectation to be misguided. For, without some
foresight that enables social adaptation, societies are at best relegated to the pages of
history, and at worse, an enigma posed to future anthropologists.
And yet, for all the self-congratulatory sophistication of the modern era, when
it comes to linking foresight with governance, humanity as a whole is still growing
up. Decades of climate science has yet to translate into any meaningful transnational
agreement that would effectively address the problem. The long-term effects of
industrialization will have detrimental effects and consequences on the future
livability of our planetary ecosystems, and yet it is a business as usual industrial
growth agenda for almost every government on the planet (Slaughter, 2010). The
question in this paper is speciically concerned with the link between social foresight
and public decision-making. How can the exploration and understanding of our
49
Journal of Futures Studies
emerging futures and challenges be effectively coupled with public deliberation
and decision-making, which facilitates and allows for societal adaptation and
transformation?
Anticipatory Governance, when viewed from the vantage point of traditions,
discourses and experiments that have taken place for more than 50 year around the
world, provides a broad palette for designing Anticipatory Governance strategies
that can be adapted to a variety of needs and contexts. Of course, a service design
approach should be taken in these situations, to collaboratively develop service
systems that fulill the deepest needs of the people we, as foresight practitioners, are
serving. Likewise, however, we should try not to re-invent the wheel nor ignoring
the rich legacy of work in the futures ield. We can draw from this legacy and adapt
it to serve people’s deepest needs to create the futures they dream for.
Correspondence
Jose M. Ramos
Journal of Futures Studies
28 Fontein St.
West Footecray,
Vic. 3012
Email:jose@actionforesight.net
Notes
1 Some would consider foresight informed strategic planning to belong to the domain
of anticipatory democracy, yet AD is a self-conscious tradition with a number of
explicit normative commitments which planning exercises may not necessarily
share.
2 http://ucfuture.universityofcalifornia.edu/
3 For an overview of Liquid Democracy see: http://www.shareable.net/blog/liquiddemocracy-the-app-that-turns-everyone-into-a-politician
4 The Club of Rome and Tellus Inst. are two examples of the types of organizations I
refer to.
5 http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/on_a_global_foresight_commons/
Acknowledgment
This research was funded by the Singaporean government in conjunction with
the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.
I would like to thank colleagues and that made this research possible. I would like
to thank the two reviewers for their feedback, as well as Professor Jim Dator, who
provided valuable suggestions.
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