Missions with Impact: A practical guide to formulating effective missions

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Guide by the Bertelsmann Stiftung: “The complex challenges associated with sustainability transitions pose major problems for modern political systems and raise the question of whether new ways of negotiation, decision-making and implementation are needed to address these challenges. For example, given the broad-reaching effects of an issue like climate change on diverse aspects of daily life, policy fields and action areas, conventional solutions are unlikely to prove effective.

Mission orientation proves to be a promising approach for addressing cross-cutting thematic challenges. It involves formulating well-defined “missions” intended to direct innovation, economic activities and societal initiatives toward desired outcomes. These missions aim for transformational change, targeting fundamental shifts that extend beyond the usual political timelines to ensure enduring impact. Across several OECD countries and at the EU level, initiatives embracing a mission-oriented approach are gaining momentum. For instance, the EU’s mission of “100 climate-neutral cities” exemplifies this approach by exploring new pathways to achieve climate neutrality by 2030. Here, stakeholders from diverse sectors can get involved to help generate effective solutions targeting the objective of climate neutrality…(More)”.

In the Land of the Unreal

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Lisa Messeri: “In the mid-2010s, a passionate community of Los Angeles-based storytellers, media artists, and tech innovators formed around virtual reality (VR), believing that it could remedy society’s ills. Lisa Messeri offers an ethnographic exploration of this community, which conceptualized VR as an “empathy machine” that could provide glimpses into diverse social realities. She outlines how, in the aftermath of #MeToo, the backlash against Silicon Valley, and the turmoil of the Trump administration, it was imagined that VR—if led by women and other marginalized voices—could bring about a better world. Messeri delves into the fantasies that allowed this vision to flourish, exposing the paradox of attempting to use a singular VR experience to mend a fractured reality full of multiple, conflicting social truths. She theorizes this dynamic as unreal, noting how dreams of empathy collide with reality’s irreducibility to a “common” good. With In the Land of the Unreal, Messeri navigates the intersection of place, technology, and social change to show that technology alone cannot upend systemic forces attached to gender and race…(More)”.

Making Sense of Wicked Problems

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Review by Andrew J. Hoffman: “While reading Oxford University professor Thomas Hale’s Long Problems: Climate Change and the Challenge of Governing Across Time, I kept thinking of evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould’s observation that “we have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life’s continuity on Earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to such responsibility, but here we are.”

Countless scientists have referred to climate change as part of a class of issues called “wicked problems,” a term used to describe issues that do not neatly fit the conventional models of analysis. While we may not be suited to solve the wicked problem of climate change and may despair that we will never be, Hale offers an analysis of how we might better understand and therefore address it.

Hale predicates Long Problems on the general observation that some political issues span not only national borders but also time horizons. His central claim is that climate change is a “long problem,” a challenge that “spans more than one human lifetime.” He acknowledges that while “length is not the only meaningful way to understand climate change, … a focus on this one characteristic can fundamentally reshape our understanding of politics” by challenging us to establish policies on longer time horizons and to account for the future in ways we have not previously done. Reenvisioning policy is important because long problems are becoming more prevalent, he argues, for three reasons: our growing technological ability to bump against limits within the environment, our growing understanding of those distant effects, and our increasing willingness to address the needs of the future in the present.

Long problems, Hale asserts, challenge us to “govern across time,” rather than in the short terms of election cycles and quarterly returns. He warns that such challenges become more difficult to address the longer we ignore long-term governance. Indeed, as long problems become more urgent, we become more immediate and short term in our political orientation. Put differently, when we are drowning, we are less concerned with fixing the cause of the flood than we are with surviving. Hale calls this a paradox that “is another of the various cruel ironies of climate change [because] it threatens precisely the political support for longer term governance functions that can best address it.”…(More)”.

Behavioral Decision Analysis

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Florian M. Federspiel, Gilberto Montibeller, and Matthias Seifert: “This book lays out a foundation and taxonomy for Behavioral Decision Analysis, featuring representative work across various domains. Traditional research in the domain of Decision Analysis has focused on the design and application of logically consistent tools to support decision makers during the process of structuring problem complexity, modeling uncertainty, generating predictions, eliciting preferences, and, ultimately, making better decisions. Two commonly held assumptions are that the decision maker’s cognitive belief system is fully accessible and that this system can be understood and formalized by trained analysts. However, in past years, an active line of research has emerged studying instances in which such assumptions may not hold. This book unites this community under the common theme of Behavioral Decision Analysis. The taxonomy used in this book categorizes research based on task focus (prediction or decision) and behavioral level (individual or group). Two theoretical lenses that lie at the interface between (1) normative and descriptive research, and (2) normative and prescriptive research are introduced. The book then proceeds to highlight representative works across the two lenses focused on individual and group-level decision making. Featuring various methodologies and applications, the book serves as a reference for researchers, students, and professionals across different disciplines with a common interest in Behavioral Decision Analysis…(More)”.

The Future of Peacebuilding: Why Investing in PeaceTech is Essential in Today’s Geopolitics

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Artur Kluz and Stefaan Verhulst: “In today’s geopolitical landscape, marked by escalating tensions and technological advancements, there is a significant opportunity for technology to contribute to conflict prevention and peacebuilding: i.e. peacetech. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in his recent speech on Technology and the Transformation of US Foreign Policy, emphasized the crucial role technology plays in geopolitical contests and its potential as an “engine of historic possibility — for our economies, for our democracies, for our people, for our planet.” His assertion that “security, stability, prosperity — they are no longer solely analog matters” underscores the necessity to urgently focus on and invest in technological innovations that can support peacebuilding in the digital age.

Peacetech is an emerging field that describes a range of technologies that can be used for peacebuilding. From satellite internet constellations and early warning systems to AI-driven conflict prediction models, peacetech has the potential to transform the landscape of peacekeeping and conflict prevention. With its diversity of applications, it can support institutions’ peacebuilding or conflict prevention activities by providing insights faster and at scale. It can empower local populations to promote their safety and security and help observers predict future conflict…(More)”.

Training new teachers with digital simulations

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the Susan McKinnon Foundation: “This report shows the findings of a rapid review of the global literature on immersive simulation for teacher preparation. It finds that immersive digital simulations – and corresponding supports – can create significant positive shifts in trainee teacher skills, knowledge, and self-efficacy. The evidence is strong; of the 35 articles in our review, 30 studies show positive improvements in trainee teacher outcomes. The 30 studies showing positive effects include studies with rigorous designs, including a comprehensive systematic review with many well designed randomised controlled studies (the ‘gold standard’ of research). Benefits are seen across a range of teaching skills, from classroom management and teaching instruction through to better communication skills with parents and colleagues.


Six active ingredients in the implementation of digital simulations are important. This includes incorporating opportunities for: [1] instructional coaching, [2] feedback, [3] observation, [4] visual examples or models of best practice, [5] high dosage, that is, practicing many times over and [6]
strong underpinning theory and content… (More)”.

LOGIC: Good Practice Principles for Mainstreaming Behavioural Public Policy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD Report: “This report outlines good practice principles intended to encourage the incorporation of behavioural perspectives as part of standard policymaking practice in government and governmental organisations. Evidence from the behavioural sciences is potentially transformative in many areas of government policy and administration. The 14 good practice principles, organised into five dimensions, present a guide to the consistent production and application of useful behavioural science evidence. Governments and governmental organisations looking to mainstream behavioural public policy may use the good practice principles and case studies included in this report to assess their current policy systems and develop strategies to further improve them…(More)”

Generative AI and Democracy: Impacts and Interventions

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Demos (UK): “This week’s election announcement has set all political parties firmly into campaign mode and over the next 40 days the public will be weighing up who will get their vote on 4th July.

This democratic moment, however, will take place against the backdrop of a new and largely untested threat; generative-AI. In the lead up to the election, the strength of our electoral integrity is likely to be tested by the spread of AI-generated content and deepfakes – an issue that over 60% of the public are concerned about, according to recent Demos and Full Fact polling.

Our new paper takes a look at the near and long-term solutions at our disposal for bolstering the resilience of our democratic institutions amidst the modern technological age. We explore the top four pressing mechanisms by which generative-AI challenges the stability of democracy, and how to mitigate them…(More)”.

Digital Media and Grassroots Anti-Corruption

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Open access book edited by Alice Mattoni: “Delving into a burgeoning field of research, this enlightening book utilises case studies from across the globe to explore how digital media is used at the grassroots level to combat corruption. Bringing together an impressive range of experts, Alice Mattoni deftly assesses the design, creation and use of a wide range of anti-corruption technologies…(More)”.

Private Thought and Public Speech

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by David Bromwich: “The past decade has witnessed a notable rise in the deployment of outrageous speech and censorship: opposite tendencies, on the face of things, which actually strengthen each other’s claim. My aim in this essay is to defend the traditional civil libertarian argument against censorship, without defending outrageous speech. By outrageous, I should add, I don’t mean angry or indignant or accusing speech, of the sort its opponents call “extreme” (often because it expresses an opinion shared by a small minority). Spoken words of this sort may give an impetus to thought, and their existence is preferable to anything that could be done to silence them. Outrageous speech, by contrast, is speech that means only to enrage, and not to convey any information or argument, in however primitive a form. No intelligent person wishes there were more of it. But, for the survival of a free society, censorship is far more dangerous.  

Let me try for a closer description of these rival tendencies. On the one hand, there is the unembarrassed publication of the degrading epithet, the intemperate accusation, the outlandish verbal assault against a person thought to be an erring member of one’s own milieu; and on the other hand, the bureaucratized penalizing of inappropriate speech (often classified as such quite recently) which has become common in the academic, media, professional, and corporate workplace. …(More)”.