FutureOriented Policy Analysis

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Future-Oriented Policy Analysis

• A Tool for Creating
• Foresight on Sustainability Governance
• Ana Jakil
• Global Marshall Plan Initiative / Ecosocial Forum
  Europe
• Bled Forum on Europe

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Uses of FRM-s in Advisory Policy Analysis

• Central Field of Application
• Foresight aiming to inform
• governance for sustainable development
• Purpose
• Design and provision of policy advice to policy
  makers aiming to meet the challenge of building
  and managing political cooperative arrangements,
  processes and coordination mechanisms for
  intergating sustainable development concept at
  all levels of policy making.
• Remark Governance represents an alternative
  approach to political regulation that stresses
  (a) use of soft policy instruments, (b) stronger
  elements of political participation of
  multivariate actors, (c) stronger cooperation at
  different policy levels. (Institute for
  Sustainability Management, Vienna)

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Problem Unreflected Use and Choice of FRM-s

• Mainstream policy analysts struggle to
• Critically reflect the deeply rooted research
  logic and habits informing their choice and use
  of FRM-s.
• Adapt existing research logic in way that enables
  them to inquire world as framed through
  sustainabilty lens.
• Critically reflect, how FRM-s fit the changing
  research habits.

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Factors Fuelling Unreflected Approach to Use of
FRM-s

• Factor 1
• Restricted Notions of Relevance of
• Methods and Methodsology for Policy Research and
  Foresight
• Methods and methodology mean the same thing
  failure to distinguish between methods as
  research paths and methodology as research logic
  guiding the choice and use of research paths.
• Qualitative research logic is less scientific
  than quantitative research logic.
• Choice and use of FRM-s is perspective
  independent.
• Conceptual shifts dont challenge the research
  logic and use of methods.

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Factors Fuelling Unreflected Approach to Use of
FRM-s

• Factor 2
• Shortcomings of Empiricist Systematisations and
  Classifications of FRM-s
• Failure to account for philosophical and
  historical foundations of FRM-s.
• Failure to account for the philosophical
  foundations of the uses of FRM-s for foresight
  and futures research.
• Failure to outline the applicative potential of
  FRM-s in terms of qualitative research.
• Lack of global exchange on methodological
  developments.

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Factors Fuelling Unreflected Approach to Use of
FRM-s

• Factor 3
• Monoparadigmatic education in applied policy
  analysis.
• Teaching of one set of FRM-s as the best.
• Learning to rely on empiricist research design.
• Learning to rely on statistical methods.
• No training to understand the alternative
  normative and interpretative foundations of the
  methods.

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Negative Consequences for Foresight

• Uncritical relience of policy analysts on
  empiricist quantitative research logic when
  choosing and using FRM-s.
• Resticted capacity of policy analysts to account
  for the world as framed through sustainability
  lens, hence, in holistic and integrated way.
• Failure to help the policy makers at making a
  sustainability shift in political thinking and at
  changing the behaviour according to
  sustainability principles.

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Solution Heuristic for Future-Oriented Policy
Analysis

• Learning device for reflected choice and use of
  FRM-s
• for foresight on sustainability governance
• Learning Goals
• Emancipation from unreflected use of FRM-s.
• Capacity to choose and use FRM-s that enables to
  account for reality as framed through
  sustaianbility lens.
• Capacity to continuosly critically asses and
  react on the eventual discrepancies between the
  research praxis and the governance for
  sustainable develeopment.
• Purposes
• Providing methodological questions and flexible
  guidelines and departing points for reflected
  choice and use of FRM-s for policy advice on
  sustainability governance in participatory,
  opened and action-oriented way

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Toward a Professional Profile of Future-Oriented
Policy Analyst

• Critical Explorer
• Tasks Supports the policy makers at accounting
  for deep uncertainty of change in patterns of
  global affairs when building sustainability
  governance.
• No-go Refuses using FRM-s on the basis of
  standardised and fixed research design based on
  ex-ante hypotheses.
• Approach Uses FRM-s on basis of flexible
  research design that allows for questioning and
  refining the use of FRM-s in response to new
  insights during the course of inquiry.
• Example RT Delphi

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Toward a Professional Profile of Future-Oriented
Policy Analyst

• Story Teller
• Tasks Facilitates and reflects global
  sensemaking, supports policy makers at choosing
  efficacious and just solution to them inside
  complex governance for sustainable development.
• No-go Refuses Using FRM-s in way that is
  ignorant toward interpretative judgements.
• Approach Uses FRM-s to debugge different
  framings of policy issues and develop/refine
  future policy frames and narrations.
• Example Building typologies of thought on the
  basis of empirical data gathered in RT Delphi
  Study.

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Toward a Professional Profile of Future-Oriented
Policy Analyst

• Facilitator of Citizen Deliberation
• Tasks Facilitates global public enlightment and
  citizen empowernment inside the governance for
  sustainable development.
• No-Go Refuses to use FRM-s in order to conduct
  top-down participatory approach, reduces social
  distance to specialised citizens.
• Approach Uses FRM-s to facilitate citizen
  deliberation and to bring to fore the grass roots
  knowledge at all stages of policy making.
• Example Local scenario workshops

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Toward a Professional Profile of Future-Oriented
Policy Analyst

• Translator across discourses
• Task Facilitates global communication across
  differences inside the governance arrangements
  for sustainable development and equalising
  information among different actors inside the
  governance for sustainable development.
• No-Go Refuses using FRM-s to collect and
  disseminate empirical data as if it would spoke
  for itself while ignoring the epistemological
  gapbetween the client and the advisor.
• Approach Uses FRM-s in order to assist policy
  makers at epistemic translation across
  discourses.
• Example Worldview Scenarios

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Toward a Professional Profile of Future-Oriented
Policy Analyst

• Honest Broaker
• Tasks Facilitates Timely Response to Conflicts,
  Randomness, Signs of Breaks and Destabilisations
  inside the governance for sustainable
  development.
• No-Go Refuses to use FRM-s for finding
  invariance, trends and regularities in social
  transition in order to create false certainty.
• Approach Using FRM-s to deconstruct and
  challenge the routinised ways of thinking.
• Example Storm Rooms

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Toward a Professional Profile of Future-Oriented
Policy Analyst

• Transdisciplinary Knowledge Agent
• Tasks Coordinates generation and dissemination
  of transdisciplinary knowledge in order to tackle
  the complex challenge of translating SD concept
  into policy making.
• No-Go Refuses to use FRM-s in order to find
  sufficient cause or to naively multiply
  formal/technical perspectives on futures.
• Approach Uses FRM-s in order to account for
  both, marginalised and privileged points of view
  that are crucial for building inclusive
  governance for sustainable development.
• Example Environmental Scanning of Issue
  Perspectives

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Toward a Professional Profile of Future-Oriented
Policy Analyst

• Seizmograph of Societal Change
• Task Facilitates account for discontinuities,
  mistakes and disarray in shifts of political
  thinking at worldview and myths/identity level
  that represent the real motor behind the global
  change and change in SDS.
• No-Go Refuses to use the FRM-s to detect only
  changes in political thinking at systems levels
  (level of quantitives trends, problems) and at
  litany level (level of social causes) of social
  reality.
• Approach Uses FRM-s in order to depict the
  shifts also at worldview and identity level of
  political thinking and to outline how the shifts
  at all levels of political thinking are
  interdependent.
• Example Causal Layered Analysis for constructing
  scenarios at different levels of political
  thinking

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Toward a Professional Profile of Future-Oriented
Policy Analyst

• Ensurer of Robustness
• Task Facilitates creation of robust
  sustainability governance that is adaptive to
  multiplicity of ever-changing global cooperation
  patterns and of SDS and discourse about it.
• No-Go Refuses to take the predict-and-act
  approach to use of FRM-s aimed at optimising
  governance for sustainable development in
  response to most probable change in patterns of
  global affairs and SD discourse.
• Approach Uses FRM-s in order to detect and
  sensitise policy makers for the long-term
  vulnerabilities of sustainability governance and
  SDS subjects sustainability governance to
  examination over range of future contingencies
  and characterises the residual deeply uncertain
  factors, to which it remains vulnerable
• Example Participatory elaboration of scenarios
  to test robustness of governance

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Toward a Professional Profile of Future-Oriented
Policy Analyst

• Facilitator of E-Governance
• Task Facilitates the global democratisation
  necessary to build inclusive governance for
  sustainable development by integrating ICT-s with
  FRM-s.
• No-Go Refuses to use ICT-s only in terms of
  quantitative research logic (quantification of
  data etc.)
• Approach Reflects the applicative potential of
  ICT-s in terms of qualitative research logics
  (deliberative research etc.)
• Example How can ICT-s improve the quality of
  citizen deliberation? (web-based learning
  theatres transformation lab)

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• Thank you for your attention.
• Ana Jakil
• Ecosocial Forum Europe
• Bled Forum on Europe
• Contact ana.jakil_at_univie.ac.at