OECD working paper: “… discusses strategic foresight initiatives and methodologies that support decision making and process design. It highlights case studies, international benchmarks, and best practices, as well as methodological recommendations and options for promoting the adoption and use of strategic foresight in government. The paper has four sections, each centred on a critical action to improve decision making through strategic foresight: (i) framing strategic foresight, (ii) building its fundamental components in governments, (iii) fine-tuning foresight interventions to specific contexts, and (iv) undertaking concrete activities to solve specific policy challenges. Given its exploratory nature, this working paper and its proposals should be seen as contributing to ongoing debates about the use of strategic foresight for decision making in government. The ultimate purpose of this paper is to help governments become more proactive and prospective…(More)”.
Citizens call for sufficiency and regulation — A comparison of European citizen assemblies and National Energy and Climate Plans
Paper by Jonas Lage et al: “There is a growing body of scientific evidence supporting sufficiency as an inevitable strategy for mitigating climate change. Despite this, sufficiency plays a minor role in existing climate and energy policies. Following previous work on the National Energy and Climate Plans of EU countries, we conduct a similar content analysis of the recommendations made by citizen assemblies on climate change mitigation in ten European countries and the EU, and compare the results of these studies. Citizen assemblies are representative mini-publics and enjoy a high level of legitimacy.
We identify a total of 860 mitigation policy recommendations in the citizen assemblies’ documents, of which 332 (39 %) include sufficiency. Most of the sufficiency policies relate to the mobility sector, the least relate to the buildings sector. Regulatory instruments are the most often proposed means for achieving sufficiency, followed by fiscal and economic instruments. The average approval rate of sufficiency policies is high (93 %), with the highest rates for regulatory policies.
Compared to National Energy and Climate Plans, the citizen assembly recommendations include a significantly higher share of sufficiency policies (factor three to six) with a stronger focus on regulatory policies. Consequently, the recommendations can be interpreted as a call for a sufficiency turn and a regulatory turn in climate mitigation politics. These results suggest that the observed lack of sufficiency in climate policy making is not due to a lack of legitimacy, but rather reflects a reluctance to implement sufficiency policies, the constitution of the policy making process and competing interests…(More)”.
EU Parliament pushes for more participatory tools for Europeans
Article by Silvia Ellena: “A majority of EU lawmakers adopted a report on Thursday (14 September) calling for more participatory tools at EU level. The report, which has no direct legislative impact, passed with 316 votes in favour, 137 against and 47 abstentions.
“We send a clear message to upgrade our democracy, a new EU Agora that involves citizens in European democratic life,” said Alin Mituța (Renew), co-rapporteur on the file, following the adoption of the report.
In the report, the Parliament called for the creation of a European Agora, an annual “structured participation mechanism” composed of citizens, who would deliberate on the EU’s priorities for the year ahead, providing input for the Commission work plan.
Moreover, EU lawmakers called for the creation of a one-stop-shop for all the existing instruments to make sure citizens have easier access to them.
The report also encourages increased use of mini-publics as well as the institutionalisation of other deliberative processes, such as the European Citizens’ Panels, which were set up by the Commission as a follow-up to the EU-wide democratic experiment known as the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE).
These panels, made of randomly selected citizens, were called to deliberate on upcoming legislation earlier this year.
Other participatory tools suggested in the report include EU-wide referendums on key EU policies as well as pan-European online citizens’ consultations to increase citizens’ knowledge of the EU as well as their trust in EU decision-making.
Finally, the Parliament called for an increased focus on the impact of EU policies on youth, suggesting the use of the ‘youth check’, a monitoring tool which has been promoted by the European Youth Forum and included in the CoFoE recommendations.
Other European institutions are already experimenting with the youth check, such as the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), whose recently appointed president included a youth test among the priorities for his mandate…
According to EU lawmakers, citizens’ participation plays a key role in strengthening democracy and the EU Commission should develop a “comprehensive European strategy to enhance citizenship competences in the EU”…(More)”.
Unsupervised: Navigating and Influencing a World Controlled by Powerful New Technologies
Book by Daniel Doll-Steinberg and Stuart Leaf: “…examines the fast-emerging technologies and tools that are already starting to completely revolutionize our world. Beyond that, the book takes an in-depth look at how we have arrived at this dizzying point in our history, who holds the reins of these formidable technologies, mostly without any supervision. It explains why we as business leaders, entrepreneurs, academics, educators, lawmakers, investors or users and all responsible citizens must act now to influence and help oversee the future of a technological world. Quantum computing, artificial intelligence, blockchain, decentralization, virtual and augmented reality, and permanent connectivity are just a few of the technologies and trends considered, but the book delves much deeper, too. You’ll find a thorough analysis of energy and medical technologies, as well as cogent predictions for how new tech will redefine your work, your money, your entertainment, your transportation and your home and cities, and what you need to know to harness and prosper from these technologies…(More)”.
Liar in a Crowded Theater
Book by Jeff Kosseff: “When commentators and politicians discuss misinformation, they often repeat five words: “fire in a crowded theater.” Though governments can, if they choose, attempt to ban harmful lies, propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation, how effective will their efforts really be? Can they punish someone for yelling “fire” in a crowded theater—and would those lies then have any less impact? How do governments around the world respond to the spread of misinformation, and when should the US government protect the free speech of liars?
In Liar in a Crowded Theater, law professor Jeff Kosseff addresses the pervasiveness of lies, the legal protections they enjoy, the harm they cause, and how to combat them. From the COVID-19 pandemic to the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections and the January 6, 2021, insurrection on the Capitol building, Kosseff argues that even though lies can inflict huge damage, US law should continue to protect them. Liar in a Crowded Theater explores both the history of protected falsehoods and where to go from here.
Drawing on years of research and thousands of pages of court documents in dozens of cases—from Alexander Hamilton’s enduring defense of free speech to Eminem’s victory in a lawsuit claiming that he stretched the truth in a 1999 song—Kosseff illustrates not only why courts are reluctant to be the arbiters of truth but also why they’re uniquely unsuited to that role. Rather than resorting to regulating speech and fining or jailing speakers, he proposes solutions that focus on minimizing the harms of misinformation. If we want to seriously address concerns about misinformation and other false speech, we must finally exit the crowded theater…(More)”.
The Secret Solution To Increasing Resident Trust
Report by CivicPlus: “We surveyed over 16,000 Americans to determine what factors most impacted community members in fostering feelings of trust in their local government. We found that residents in communities with digital resident self-service technology are more satisfied with their local government than residents still dependent on analog interactions to obtain government services. Residents in technology-forward communities also tend to be more engaged civic participants…(More)”.
State Capacities and Wicked Problems of Public Policy: Addressing Vulnerabilities that Affect Human Development
Report by Mosqueira, Edgardo; and Alessandro, Martín: “There is a growing mismatch between the types of public problems that governments face and the capabilities of the public administrations that design and implement policies to address them. Traditional administrative processes, the division of labor into ministries and agencies with clearly defined mandates, and even results-based management tools (such as logical frameworks or project management methodologies) are useful to address problems with relatively linear and predictable cause-effect relationships, in which success depends on the reliable execution of a predefined plan. In contrast, when dealing with wicked problems, multiple factors and actors are involved, often pushing in opposite directions and generating impacts across different sectors. Therefore, it is difficult to both align incentives and predict the effect of interventions. Such complex systems require a different approach, one that promotes collaboration among diverse actors, experimentation and learning to understand what works, and the ability to make rapid adjustments to interventions. This report illustrates the characteristics of wicked problems in two crucial development areas for Latin American and Caribbean countries: inequality and climate change. For each, it proposes institutional and managerial reforms that would expand the intervention capacities of LAC governments and analyzes the most relevant contexts for each option…(More)”.
EU leadership in trustworthy AI: Guardrails, Innovation & Governance
Article by Thierry Breton: “As mentioned in President von der Leyen’s State of the Union letter of intent, Europe should lead global efforts on artificial intelligence, guiding innovation, setting guardrails and developing global governance.
First, on innovation: we will launch the EU AI Start-Up Initiative, leveraging one of Europe’s biggest assets: its public high-performance computing infrastructure. We will identify the most promising European start-ups in AI and give them access to our supercomputing capacity.
I have said it before: AI is a combination of data, computing and algorithms. To train and finetune the most advanced foundation models, developers need large amounts of computing power.
Europe is a world leader in supercomputing through its European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC). Soon, Europe will have its first exascale supercomputers, JUPITER in Germany and JULES VERNE in France (able to perform a quintillion -that means a billion billion- calculations per second), in addition to various existing supercomputers (such as LEONARDO in Italy and LUMI in Finland).
Access to Europe’s supercomputing infrastructure will help start-ups bring down the training time for their newest AI models from months or years to days or weeks. And it will help them lead the development and scale-up of AI responsibly and in line with European values.
This goes together with our broader efforts to support AI innovation across the value chain – from AI start-ups to all those businesses using AI technologies in their industrial ecosystems. This includes our Testing and Experimentation Facilities for AI (launched in January 2023), our Digital Innovation Hubs, the development of regulatory sandboxes under the AI Act, our support for the European Partnership on AI, Data and Robotics and the cutting-edge research supported by HorizonEurope.
Second, guardrails for AI: Europe has pioneered clear rules for AI systems through the EU AI Act, the world’s first comprehensive regulatory framework for AI. My teams are working closely with the Parliament and Council to support the swift adoption of the EU AI Act. This will give citizens and businesses confidence in AI developed in Europe, knowing that it is safe and respects fundamental rights and European values. And it serves as an inspiration for global rules and principles for trustworthy AI.
As reiterated by President von der Leyen, we are developing an AI Pact that will convene AI companies, help them prepare for the implementation of the EU AI Act and encourage them to commit voluntarily to applying the principles of the Act before its date of applicability.
Third, governance: with the AI Act and the Coordinated Plan on AI, we are working towards a governance framework for AI, which can be a centre of expertise, in particular on large foundation models, and promote cooperation, not only between Member States, but also internationally…(More)”
Evidence-based policymaking in the legislatures
Blog by Ville Aula: “Evidence-based policymaking is a popular approach to policy that has received widespread public attention during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as in the fight against climate change. It argues that policy choices based on rigorous, preferably scientific evidence should be given priority over choices based on other types of justification. However, delegating policymaking solely to researchers goes against the idea that policies are determined democratically.
In my recent article published in Policy & Politics: Evidence-based policymaking in the legislatures we explored the tension between politics and evidence in the national legislatures. While evidence-based policymaking has been extensively studied within governments, the legislative arena has received much less attention. The focus of the study was on understanding how legislators, legislative committees, and political parties together shape the use of evidence. We also wanted to explore how the interviewees understand timeliness and relevance of evidence, because lack of time is a key challenge within legislatures. The study is based on 39 interviews with legislators, party employees, and civil servants in Eduskunta, the national Parliament of Finland.
Our findings show that, in Finland, political parties play a key role in collecting, processing, and brokering evidence within legislatures. Finnish political parties maintain detailed policy programmes that guide their work in the legislature. The programmes are often based on extensive consultations with expert networks of the party and evidence collection from key stakeholders. Political parties are not ready to review these programmes every time new evidence is offered to them. This reluctance can give the appearance that parties do not want to follow evidence. Nevertheless, reluctance is oftens necessary for political parties to maintain stable policy platforms while navigating uncertainty amidst competing sources of evidence. Party positions can be based on extensive evidence and expertise even if some other sources of evidence contradict them.
Partisan expert networks and policy experts employed by political parties in particular appear to be crucial in formulating the evidence-base of policy programmes. The findings suggest that these groups should be a new target audience for evidence brokering. Yet political parties, their employees, and their networks have rarely been considered in research on evidence-based policymaking.
Turning to the question of timeliness we found, as expected, that use of evidence in the Parliament of Finland is driven by short-term reactiveness. However, in our study, we also found that short-term reactiveness and the notion of timeliness can refer to time windows ranging from months to weeks and, sometimes, merely days. The common recommendation by policy scholars to boost uptake of evidence by making it timely and relevant is therefore far from simple…(More)”.
Rules of Order: Assessing the State of Global Governance
Paper by Stewart Patrick: “The current disorder has multiple causes, although their relative weight can be debated. They include intensifying strategic competition between the United States and China, two superpowers with dramatically different world order visions and clashing material interests; Russia’s brazen assault against its neighbor, resulting in the most serious armed conflict in Europe since World War II; an ongoing diffusion of power from advanced market democracies to emerging nations with diverse preferences, combined with resistance from established powers against accommodating them in multilateral institutions; a widespread retreat from turbocharged globalization, as national governments seek to claw back autonomy from market forces to pursue industrial, social, national security, and other policies and, in some cases, to weaponize interdependence; growing alienation between richer and poorer nations, exacerbated by accelerating climate change and stalled development; a global democratic recession now in its seventeenth year that has left no democracy unscathed; and a resurgence of sovereignty-minded nationalism that calls on governments to take back control from forces blamed for undermining national security, prosperity, and identity. (The “America First” ethos of Donald Trump’s presidency, which rejected the tenets of post-1945 U.S. internationalism, is but the most prominent recent example.) In sum, the crisis of cooperation is as much a function of the would-be global problem-solvers as it is a function of the problems themselves.
Given these centrifugal tendencies, is there any hope for a renewed open, rules-based world order? As a first step in answering this question, this paper surveys areas of global convergence and divergence on principles and rules of state conduct across fourteen major global issue areas. These are grouped into four categories: (1) rules to promote basic stability and peaceful coexistence by reducing the specter of violence; (2) rules to facilitate economic exchange and prosperity; (3) rules to promote cooperation on transnational and even planetary challenges like climate change, pandemics, the global commons, and the regulation of cutting-edge technologies; and (4) rules that seek to embed liberal values, particularly principles of democracy and human rights, in the international sphere. This stocktaking reveals significant preference diversity and normative disagreement among nations in both emerging and long-established spheres of interdependence. Ideally, this brief survey will give global policymakers a better sense of what, collectively, they are up against—and perhaps even suggest ways to bridge existing differences…(More)”