Strategic foresight in public policy: Reviewing the experiences of the UK, Singapore, and the Netherlands

In an interdependent and complex world, only few public policy challenges can be confined to one particular policy area anymore. Many governments have realized that a single-issue focus is often insufficient in dealing with emerging threats and opportunities. They have therefore started to experiment with strategic foresight that deliberately cuts across the traditional boundaries of policy areas and government departments. This article reviews the foresight activities of three countries that have been at the forefront of this trend: the United Kingdom, Singapore, and the Netherlands. To this end, the article discusses the concept of strategic foresight and explains the two distinct ways in which it contributes to public policy-making: on the one hand, it informs policy by providing more systematic knowledge about relevant trends and developments in an organization's environments; on the other hand, it acts as a driver of reflexive mutual social learning processes among policy-makers that stimulate the generation of common public policy visions. The article concludes by drawing lessons with regard to the key success factors allowing strategic foresight to make an effective contribution to public policy-making.     

Bridging the academic–policy-making gap: practice and policy issues

How policy-makers engage with academics is both a current ‘hot’ topic and a perennial problem. Policy initiatives such as the Research Excellence Framework's (REF) so-called ‘impact agenda’ have ‘pushed’ academics towards seeking more such engagement, whilst others ‘pull’ towards it, such as ‘open policy-making’. Apart from some biographical accounts and case studies, surprisingly little is known at a more general level about how policy-makers do actually engage with academic research and expertise. Analysis of these policies, as well as empirical evidence from the British civil service, suggest these engagements may be generating more ‘endarkenment’ (to use Weiss's term) than enlightenment.     

Squandering the future—Climate change,policy failure and the water crisis in Australia

Since European arrival (1788), statist developmentalism¹ has driven natural resource use in Australia. Despite evidence of a systematic decline in the quality of Australia's ecosystems, policy-making still reflects the exploitative paradigm upon which statist developmentalism relies. This paper will draw on recent policy changes within the water sector in Australia as a case study, allowing the authors to consider the types of social, economic and ecological consequences that can come from statist developmentalism. Fuelled by climate change, water availability is looming as an extremely serious problem for Australia. Despite this, recent policy changes within the water sector are not likely to achieve sustainable water use in the short-term, and may do little to subvert statist developmentalism as the dominant paradigm within natural resource use in Australia in the foreseeable future.     

Foresight and long-term policy-making: An analysis of anticipatory boundary work in policy organizations in The Netherlands

Public policy is founded on analysis and knowledge. However, knowledge – and especially knowledge about the future – is not a self-evident element of public policy-making. This paper conceptualizes the problematic relationship between anticipatory policy-making and anticipatory knowledge. Our study identifies possible key-variables in the linkage between foresight and policy, such as positioning, timing interfaces, professional background, instrument usage, procedures and leadership. We describe the organization and flow of policy and futures knowledge. Furthermore, we generalize these findings toward a theory concluding how ‘goodness of fit’ between knowledge about the future and policy can be achieved, so that the likelihood of informed future-oriented policies might increase.     

The impact of foresight on environmental science and technology policy in the Netherlands

Globalisation, high tech development and environmental issues have made policy makers aware again of the possibilities of future studies for policy making. However, the lack of systematic knowledge about their impact is a major obstruction to a proper use of future studies. Especially since future studies no longer claim to predict the future, but are seen as a strategic tool for improving strategic interaction between key actors and for anticipatory policy making, insight in the dynamics of future studies is indispensable. In this article we review four future studies in the Netherlands with an eye on their methods and related impact on research in sustainable technology. Although in content the four studies were quite similar, they were complementary in linking research strategies and policy objectives.     

Futures research and policy formulation : The Spanish experience

The expectation that futures research will contribute to the formulation of policy is increasing, in an environment characterised by growing complexity and uncertainty about the future. In this paper the role of a public institute for futures studies in Spain is briefly described, and the participation of the institute in the policy-making process is discussed. A particular example of its role, in the area of long-term economic policy, is outlined. A methodological aspect of a recently completed study of Spain in the 1980s is presented; this methodology is derived from Interpretative Structural Modelling and from Qualitative Analysis (signed directed graphs) and is used to portray a possible structure of policy objectives.     

Puzzling stakeholder views for long-term planning in the bio-economy: A back-casting application

Planning long-term actions in the South of Italy is often characterised by a ‘vicious circle of non-participation’. Stakeholders are increasingly not aware of the relevant role they have in supporting policy-making processes, even if they are usually keen to express their opinions. The aim of the study is to suggest policy-makers and practitioners a way to change their approach to long-term strategies definition in areas with traditionally scarce experience in stakeholder participation and where ‘good governance’ often lacks. On the whole, empirical results are very positive. The study allowed us to combine both puzzling and powering required by long-term strategies with a positive effect on the democratisation of the policymaking. In particular, both the e-mail survey and the workshop were important moments to sharing knowledge with experts, to putting together the different visions from stakeholders and to drawing possible policy actions (puzzling). Moreover, the backcasting timeline that clearly indicates the sequence of events and the involved stakeholders, and the strategy's validation questionnaires can be intended as a step towards a guide as to how power can be organised for each stage of the process (powering).     

Learning ahead of time: how evaluation of foresight may add to increased trust,organizational learning and future oriented policy and strategy

Evaluation of futures research (foresight) consists of three elements: quality, success, and impact of a study. Futures research ought to be methodologically and professionally sound, should to a certain extent be accurate, and should have a degree of impact on strategic decision making and policy-making. However, in the case of futures studies, the one does not automatically lead to the other. Quality of method does not ensure success, just as quality and success do not guarantee impact. This article explores the new paths for understanding evaluating of futures studies that are provided by the various articles in this special issue and sets out an agenda for next steps with regard to evaluation of futures research. The more structural and systematic evaluation can result in an increased level of trust in futures research, which may in turn lead to more future oriented strategy, policy and decision making. Therefore, evaluation should be seen as more than a burden of accountability – albeit important as accountability is – but as an investment in the credibility and impact of the profession. It may set in motion a cycle of mutual learning that will not only improve the capacity of futures-researchers but will also enhance the capacity and likeliness of decision-makers to apply insight from futures research.     

Barriers to the investment in the Concentrated Solar Power sector in Morocco: A foresight approach using the Cross Impact Analysis for a large number of events

The Scenario Analysis methods have often been used by policy makers as an instrument to manage uncertainty and to support the shaping of long-term economy policies. In this research, we apply Scenario Analysis in order to identify the barriers affecting the decision to invest in the Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) sector in Morocco. Our results aim at facilitating the process of defining different paths in strategic political and policy actions. Using data from a survey on a panel of experts, the Cross Impact Analysis (CIA) and the Cross Impact Matrix System (SMIC) techniques are applied. The advantage of these techniques is that they allow including in the analysis the interlinkages between the events that will define the future scenarios. However, their limitation is that the number of events analyzed cannot be too high since the information collected from the experts increases exponentially according to the number of events introduced. We thus expand our analysis with a new methodological approach, combining the use of prospective and statistics techniques. This approach allows addressing the mentioned limitation and applying these techniques, initially restricted to 6 events in its common application, to a large number of events. The results show that uncertainty and informality would be key factors in promoting the arrival of companies in this sector. Additionally, regarding companies that already have a presence in Morocco’s renewable energy sector, an increase in activity would be achieved through improvements in the easing of financial and legal barriers.     

Risk governance and emerging technologies: learning from case study integration

Emerging technologies are underway in a wide array of industrial applications and need fields. When innovating on technologies, one main objective is to improve the management of safety related to their emerging risks. The iNTeg-Risk project undertook 17 case studies covering current key innovations and focusing on their corresponding risks. Thus, a major challenge is to integrate the case study research into a common framework on adequate future risk and safety concepts which might serve policy and stakeholder decision-makers as a background for risk-related decisions in the future. Within this paper, we looked on similarities and disparities on how these case studies assess, manage, and communicate risk issues. A telephone survey with case study task leaders has been carried out in order to identifying the state-of-the-art of how the case studies deal with risk governance issues.     

Credit Unions in Britain: A Time for Change

As member-owned, not-for-profit financial institutions, credit unions are an important instrument of public policy, particularly in pushing forward measures to tackle financial and social exclusion. Historically, the credit union movement in Great Britain has been hampered by a number of factors, including a lack of leadership, a cohesive identity and regulatory impediments. Recent legislative review and change has provided credit unions with the opportunity to grow and extend the scale and scope of services they can offer to their members. However, policy-makers should be aware that funding initiatives to support credit union development might undermine their self-help cornerstone and weaken the future development of the movement.     

The behavioral basis of policies fostering long-run transitions: Stakeholders,limited rationality and social context

Writings on sustainability transitions generally pay slight attention to the specific behavioral characteristics of individuals, groups and organizations. This paper examines how modern insights about bounded rationality, social interaction and learning can contribute to making transition polices more effective in addressing barriers and opportunities to realize a sustainability transition in the near future. We argue that the behavioral underpinnings of features like lock-in, surprises in innovation systems and network interactions have been insufficiently elaborated and connected to policy design. We identify and illustrate the most important behavioral features of relevant stakeholders in transition processes. By focusing on behavioral features at both individual and organizational levels, we arrive at recommendations for policy makers regarding important barriers to change and how to overcome these. Specific policy insights are offered at multiple levels, for different stakeholders, and associated with both behavioral biases and social interactions. The analysis combines insights from the literatures on sustainability transitions, “environmental–behavioral economics”, and behavioral foundations of learning and innovation. Our framework may serve as a basis for coherent behavior studies of transitions that otherwise run the risk of being ad hoc. This will improve conditional forecasting of system responses to transition policies.     

Credit Unions in Britain: A Time for Change

As member-owned, not-for-profit financial institutions, credit unions are an important instrument of public policy, particularly in pushing forward measures to tackle financial and social exclusion. Historically, the credit union movement in Great Britain has been hampered by a number of factors, including a lack of leadership, a cohesive identity and regulatory impediments. Recent legislative review and change has provided credit unions with the opportunity to grow and extend the scale and scope of services they can offer to their members. However, policy-makers should be aware that funding initiatives to support credit union development might undermine their self-help cornerstone and weaken the future development of the movement.     

Anticipatory policymaking in global venues: Policy change,adaptation, and the UNFCCC

The subfield of public policy depicts policymaking as reactive process wherein public officials respond to existing social problems. While this depiction holds true in many cases, it fails to account for instances where policy change occurs in anticipation of emerging threats or hazards. “Anticipatory problems” are projected to occur in the future, and it is the prospect of their occurring that generates policy debate. This paper examines the policymaking pattern engendered by anticipatory policy problems, highlighting the ways in which they challenge and support existing assumptions about the process of policy change. To illustrate this distinctive dynamic, this paper will present a case study examining the evolving debate over climate change adaptation policy within United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).     

THE IMPACT OF FUNDHOLDING ON PRIMARY HEALTH CARE: ACCOUNTS FROM SCOTTISH GPS

At the inception of the internal market in health care GP fundholding was seen rather as a 'sidesho' to the main reforms. But as the reforms have worked through, GP fundholding has emerged as pivotal to the purchaserlprovider agenda and the changes now associated with GP fundholding will be major issues in directing future health care policy initiatives. Drawing on empirical data from three Scottish regions, this paper argues that fundholding is now significant because GPs perceive benefits for primary health care. The paper uses the data collected from the case studies in the regions to assess these gains on two levels: the 'micro' impact of fundholding on primary health care processes and the 'macro' issues raised for health care policy by involving GPs more closely in resource management. Some GPs wish to use resource management as a vehicle for enhancing equity within the NHS, others are more concerned to manage resources so as to expand their practices into sites which combine primary, secondary and community health care, still others envisage developing the market to include monetary rewards for 'efficient' practices.     

Action oriented futures studies in Hungary

The significant social changes and unstable social-economic processes we are undergoing require more participation and more future oriented grassroots activity both in designing the possible future alternatives and in the actions for the realization of them. Action oriented futures studies and participatory futures studies are in close connection, because orientation towards actions and participation of non-professionals can be strengthened by their mutual interdependence in futures work. This study gives—as examples—summaries of four Hungarian case studies using participatory futures methods: one case from the field of vocational training, two cases concerning regional development, and one about national social-economic development. Our experience shows that such selected groups have evaluated the present issues in their environments as well as the closer and broader regional issues in authentic ways. The future alternatives that were outlined regarding the future of vocational training, acceptable future alternatives of domestic social-economic development, and future living conditions of a smaller settlement and in a larger town, reflected obligation, responsibility and personal interest. That non-professionals lack sufficient future orientation, and do not see possibilities to take serious actions for the future is a read problem. Fortunately, it seems that the future and action oriented attitude of the individuals might be further developed by the use of partnership education.     

通胀目标调整、政策可信度与宏观调控效应北大核心

本文通过构建包含范式转变特征的DSGE模型,对通胀目标调整过程中的结构性变化以及政策可信度如何影响这一结构转变进行研究,并在此基础上分析通胀目标调整过程中政策可信度对宏观经济波动的调控效应。本文分析得到:在政策当局做出政策目标调整后,如果市场预期这一政策可信,那么主要经济变量将会在政策调整期内达到目标均衡水平;反之,如果市场预期这一政策不可信,那么市场预期和政策目标之间的分歧将使得主要经济变量偏离目标均衡水平,导致政策调整无法实现其既定目标。同时,政策可信度不仅有助于实现既定的政策目标,还能降低政策实施过程中的经济波动,具有较好的宏观调控效应,从而降低政策实施成本。特别是,政策可信度对宏观经济波动的这一稳定效应在中长期内更为明显。本文分析为理解经济结构性转变过程中的政策信用和预期管理等问题提供了一些新的思路和方法。     

Imagineering city futures: The use of prospective through scenarios in urban planning

This article, based on empirical work by the authors over the past decade, argues that city planners and policy-makers lack an effective future-oriented approach enabling them to comprehend current complexity, anticipate impending change and shape a preferred future condition.Reflecting on more than a dozen recent city futures exercises, three overriding themes emerge: changing values systems will be the single biggest driver over the next thirty years; the forging of shared visions is a prerequisite to strategic city planning; and the nature, force and direction of the various vectors of collaborative leadership by constituent stakeholders will determine the future success or otherwise of city stewardship.The article concludes by calling for the formulation of a Unified Theory for Sustainable Cities by reference to Gaia and the application of a futures oriented approach such as Prospective Through Scenarios.     

Rethinking the role of NCBs in the EMU

Five years after the introduction of unified monetary policy in the EMU, some member countries are wondering whether they have ceded too much of their policy-making powers. The fact that National Central Banks no longer carry out sizable expansionary open market or foreign exchange market operations suggests that they face substantially reduced abilities to set economic policy.This paper demonstrates that, in fact, very little power has been yielded: on the fiscal front, the force of such policy initiatives is enhanced by the fixity of the exchange rate. On the monetary front, we show that there is an observational equivalence between all Central Bank actions under fixed exchange rates. This implies that the authorities retain the same amount of policy flexibility as before. So long as they use an alternative form of policy initiative, carrying out what previously would have been characterized as sterilized foreign exchange market operations, their ability to influence the macro performance of their economy is undiminished.     

Using scenarios to explore UK upland futures

Uplands around the world are facing significant social, economic and environmental changes, and decision-makers need to better understand what the future may hold if they are to adapt and maintain upland goods and services. This paper draws together all major research comprising eight studies that have used scenarios to describe possible futures for UK uplands. The paper evaluates which scenarios are perceived by stakeholders to be most likely and desirable, and assesses the benefits and drawbacks of the scenario methods used in UK uplands to date. Stakeholders agreed that the most desirable and likely scenario would be a continuation of hill farming (albeit at reduced levels) based on cross-compliance with environmental measures. The least desirable scenario is a withdrawal of government financial support for hill farming. Although this was deemed by stakeholders to be the least likely scenario, the loss of government support warrants close attention due to its potential implications for the local economy. Stakeholders noted that the environmental implications of this scenario are much less clear-cut. As such, there is an urgent need to understand the full implications of this scenario, so that upland stakeholders can adequately prepare, and policy-makers can better evaluate the likely implications of different policy options. The paper concludes that in future, upland scenario research needs to: (1) better integrate in-depth and representative participation from stakeholders during both scenario development and evaluation; and (2) make more effective use of visualisation techniques and simulation models.