Trends Identified
The Role of Think Tanks
Think tanks play a fundamental role in shaping policy agendas. They mobilise expertise and put forward evidence. They push for innovative change and they build networks and communities through which they nurture and spread ideas and catalyse action. The current environment of fast-paced transformations and increasingly complex and intertwined challenges at local, national and global levels would seem to create a perfect backdrop for think tanks to engage in dynamically, offering creative, pragmatic and actionable policy solutions on tangible issues.
2016
Shaping the future
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
The Future of Universities and Evidence-Based Research
Among the European Union’s best assets are its highly- educated population, its universities, and its research capacity. Europe’s universities have, through the course of their rich history contributed hugely to modern thought and to modern science. They have helped shape the world that we know today. Past glories will not sustain us forever. Universities need to change in order to serve the needs of tomorrow’s economy and society. This is not in debate. There is a need for more skills - and more research- in science and technology, for example. Universities will continue to have a central role in the drive for technological innovation.
2016
Shaping the future
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
A European Citizens’ Foundational Assembly
Democracy is in tatters. In a period of rapid change, in particular of the scale and width of interdependencies among societies and with biosphere, institutions and methods of governance, including representative democracy, have shown great inertia, both conceptually and institutionally. This means that we attempt to manage present and coming societal challenges with a conceptual and institutional framework created centuries ago. Talking about governance means adopting a much broader historical perspective, looking for general principles which should guide our badly needed quest for a governance and a democracy appropriate to our needs.
2016
Shaping the future
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
The Internet as Subject of Democratic Engagement
Nearly all democratic theories characterise democracy as an open-ended, necessarily incomplete and dynamic project. Its concrete form varies over time and across regions; and the scope of self-determination may shrink or expand even if its legal framework may remain unaltered. However, when we think of the relationship between democracy and the Internet, we often focus on rather traditional forms of democratic engagement and control. This may concern, for example, new opportunities for participation or more transparency and accountability in political decision- making. Yet, if we regard the Internet as a mere tool for political action, we risk overlooking that and how digital technologies and democratic practices mutually influence each other and thereby create something new.
2016
Shaping the future
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
The Elephant in the Room: the Many Dimensions of Inequality in Europe
The gap between rich and poor has widened. Austerity programmes enacted by a series of EU governments since 2009, with the aim of reducing budget deficits, have had a disproportionate effect on those with lower incomes and exacerbated income differences. 1 in 4 Europeans are estimated to be at risk of poverty and social exclusion in the EU. Recent publications (e.g. Branko Milanovic’s Elephant chart) suggest that lower middle classes in rich countries have been one of the most prominent losers of globalisation in the past couple of decades. And they fuel expectations that inequality will further increase in years to come.
2016
Shaping the future
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
The Future of Work, Technology, Income Gaps and the Role of Governments
The future of work and technology and increasing income gaps are among the most discussed topics of long-term prospects at the moment. However, systemic perspectives and global as well as local strategies to improve the long-term outlook are often lacking. Government long- term and large-scale strategies are needed to address the potential scope and spectrum of unemployment and income gaps in the foreseeable future due to the acceleration, globalisation, and integration of technological capacities and population growth.
2016
Shaping the future
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Cities of Flows and the Spectre of the Sustainable City
It is vitally important to recognise that planetary urbanisation is one of the main drivers of the ecological predicament the world is in. Indeed, the ‘sustainability’ of contemporary urban life – understood as the expanded reproduction of its socio-physical form and functioning – accounts for 80% of the world’s resource use, of global ecological degradation, and of the world’s waste. What I wish to foreground in this contribution is that these urban roots that structure global socio- ecological flows and the feeble techno-managerial attempts to produce more ‘sustainable’ forms of urban living actually are customarily ignored by both researchers and policy-makers, while it is precisely these socio-metabolic flows that continue to sharpen the combined and uneven socio-ecological patterning that marks contemporary urbanisation dynamics.
2016
Shaping the future
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
The Future of Foresight in Europe. Beyond Evidence-Based Pessimism to Realistic Hope
A focus on the short term often overemphasises negative, trends of doom and gloom. Developing and using foresight enables realistic hope. It pushes beyond sugar-coated ideology about what the future should be and the evidence-based pessimism that is driving fear of the future. Foresight is a disciplined approach to futures thinking that enables societies to thrive under disruptive changes and to collaborate to create new and better future possibilities for all. It is not about wishful thinking. The aim is not to predict, but to be better prepared. To develop a more explicit, testable, contestable and useful sense of the future that is already emerging in the here-and-now.
2016
Shaping the future
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Strategic Foresight: a Mechanism for Stakeholder Mutuality
The last decade was marked by a fundamental misalignment between the global economic system and the societies which it is expected to serve, between political systems that must enable prosperity and progress and the rising expectations of voters. This is at the heart of the social upheaval, rising populism and the declining trust in institutions seen in many western democracies.
2016
Shaping the future
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Managing by Anticipation
Decision-makers have always been faced with the tasks of addressing crises, leading change and responding to the unexpected. Recently, however, unexpected and constant change has become the norm, while the interconnections between separate and distinct crises are more tightly knit than ever. Technological innovations have amplified these trends to an unprecedented degree in terms of pace, scope, complexity and impact. And, while some crises are already loud and visible, others are less easy to spot or to predict, although they may potentially be more toxic in the long run.
2016
Shaping the future
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)