The Role of Foresight in the Policy-Making Process

Transcription

1 The Role of Foresight in the Policy-Making Process Policy Facilitating and Policy informing Inherent tension or two sides of the coin? Background & brainstorming presentation Philine Warnke, Olivier Da Costa, Fabiana Scapolo FOR-LEARN Mutual Learning Workshop Seville, 2nd December 2005

2 Aim of the 3 FOR-LEARN Mutual Learning workshops How can Foresight be useful for policy making? Impact will only be achieved when Real needs are met but also When they are met in a suitable way Therefore crucial to understand Policy needs Challenges in fulfilling these needs arising from the current nature and context of policy making Based on this understanding we aim to derive some recommendations on the conceptualisation and practises of Foresight for policy-making.

3 Content 1. Why re-consider impact of Foresight? 2. Foresight as policy-facilitating 3. Foresight as policy-informing 4. Tensions / trade-offs between different functions? 5. Approaches to address this tension: Separation Integration Translation 6. Discussion

4 1 Why re-consider impact of Foresight? Long-standing experience in Foresight review of lessons learned impact assessment Shifting balance between product and process calls for rethinking the impact on policy Changes in context of policy calling for new policy support tools

5 Need for systemic instruments Drivers for the need for systemic instruments Central role of networks and interfaces within knowledge society Insight into co-evolution between technology and societal context Broadening of decision making procedures Multi level governance Focus of systemic instruments (Smits & Kuhlmann 2004) Management of interfaces Facilitate new combinations of elements within a system Providing a platform for learning and experimenting Providing an infrastructure for (distributed) strategic intelligence Stimulating demand articulation and common visions Benefit for policy Enhancing capability for self-organisation Facilitating policy implementation

6 Foresight as a systemic instrument Foresight is fulfilling many of the functions of systemic instrument such as Establishing linkages Building joint visions Providing learning platforms Promoting new combinations between elements Foresight is a promising candidate to be used as a systemic instrument

7 Contributions of Foresight to the policymaking process Providing forward-looking intelligence for policy conceptualisation and design ( policy-informing ); Building common ground, links, interfaces and visions among and across actors and stakeholders within a certain policy arena to enhance the capability of systems to change ( policy-facilitating /tuning/ mediating / wiring up???.). Additional Democratic dimension Symbolic functions

8 Foresight Functions Arena Policy Policy informing Anticipatory intelligence Recommendations Links Distributed Intelligence Joint Learning Platform Joint Vision Distributed Intelligence Policy Facilitating

9 2 Foresight as policy-facilitating Building common ground Establishing linkages & interfaces Building joint visions Providing learning platforms Promoting new combinations between elements Creating distributed intelligence Policy benefit: Enhanced capability of systems to change and thereby to react to future challenges

10 Challenges of policy-facilitating Assumed influence on policy decision making one of the main motivating factors for actors to engage in the process Coming together for the sake of it is not sufficient Danger that lobbies dominate the process (Rémi Barré) Policy makers are disconnected and may question the legitimacy of the exercise Other instruments may be better suited to orient stakeholders in a certain direction (e.g. transition management) Normal channels of democratic decision making might be put at risk (Rémi Barré)

11 3 Foresight as policy-informing Providing forward-looking intelligence for policy conceptualisation and design

12 Challenges of policy-informing I Under severe time pressure Information overload, not always reliable not always relevant Uncertainty, speed of change Difficulty to switch modes urgency focussed long-term overview Increasing complexity of issues Multi-dimensional: S&T, cultural & social, political, economic, environmental Inter-connection, inter-dependency Multi-causal, good old fashioned control system not applicable You can never change one thing

13 Challenges of policy-informing II Policy makers do not make rational choices based on pre-existent objectives but objectives are continuously adapted in the process of decision making (Menendez, Cabello, Garcia) Reduced ability of single policy actor to influence decision leads to reduced motivation to engage in intelligence collection (Menendez, Cabello, Garcia) If legitimating/symbolic function dominates the need for information gathering, the link to decision making will be weak (Menendez, Cabello, Garcia)

14 4 Tensions / trade-offs between different functions? Process benefits are calling for wide participation but the wider the range of stakeholders, the more difficult it is to derive one coherent set of intelligence (Rémi Barré: trade off between extensiveness and intensiveness) Conflicting viewpoints and conflicts of interest in a process-oriented exercise make it difficult to provide consensual recommendations Visions of actors are not necessarily useful for policy as there are different considerations for policy makers to be taken into account Lack of knowledge of policy process may result in somewhat naïve recommendations Symbolic function (rational intelligence based decision making) is reduced if no intelligence is produced (Cecilia Cabello Valdes)

15 Rémi Barré Trade-off Intensiveness / extensiveness Intensiveness Completeness of learning cycle Professional-analytic Foresight Extensiveness Number and variety of persons involved Societal Foresight Ref: Spanish Foresight conf May 2002

16 Possible consequences for Foresight exercises Design is struggling to follow diverse objectives Excessive expectations lead to disappointment and discredit of Foresight as a policy-support methodology E.g. policy-makers expecting figures and rankings and indicators and receiving networks and common visions

17 5 Approaches to address this tension Separation Integration Translation

18 Separation Two types of exercise Professional-analytic Foresight Policy R&D community Industry Societal Foresight Civil Society E.g.: Rémi Barré Wallonie Exercise

19 Integration Policy-makers part of the process Policy Foresight embedded into the policy-making process R&D community Industry Civil Society E.g.: Matthias Weber adaptive policy strategy

20 Translation Outcome of participatory Foresight is translated to policymakers Olivier Da Costa: complexity reducing roadmaps Arie Rip: Narrative scripts Policy Interface Anticipatory intelligence Recommendations Distributed Intelligence Joint Vision links Arena

21 Bottleneck in the transmission of knowledge from the Society / Academy / Industry to policy-making Intelligence has nothing to do with politics. Winston Churchill Problematic of policy-making often on a reduced basis Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it and then misapplying the wrong remedies. Groucho Marx (over)simplification and formatting for the messages to go through: indicators, ranking (universities, transparency...) Huge basis of material in the Society, Academy, Industry Ref: Prague methodology workshop October 2005

22 Translation Rationale: Creating special interfaces from Foresight to policy such as Mediators transmitting complexity to policy-makers Graphical elements: roadmapping Narrative scripts: Scenarios for Ambient Intelligence Multimedia tool: Visions Project (Venice 2050) Interactive website: FOR-LEARN Policy experts cooperating with the Foresight team advising on policy needs

23 Problematic of policy-making often on a reduced basis Huge basis of material in the Society, Academy, Industry

24 6 Handing over the hot potato to you What kind of impact should Foresight aim at What is most needed? What can Foresight best provide? How can the challenges be met? What is your experience in policy advising practice?