❓ Why hasn't the government gotten back to us about this great foresight study we did?
If you are involved in #PolicyOrientedForesight, #AnticipatoryGovernance and #StrategicIntelligence, you may have questioned the fit and impact of your work on policy. In our new publication, Philine Warnke, Sylvia Veit and I problematize these complicated foresight-policy interactions.
📖 "Understanding Foresight-Policy Interactions" --> https://lnkd.in/eUrjFE9M
We propose "institutionalization" as a process that shapes the formation of working practices and routines along four dimensions. Rather than trying to measure how foresight affects policy decisions, we are looking at how institutionalization affects the government's ability to absorb, interpret, and adopt anticipatory practices.
Our findings
-Decades of research on policy advice have taught us that simply providing 'better' methods does not necessarily result in 'greater' impact.
- We argue that one conducive factor for avoiding loose ends in foresight-policy interactions and facilitating absorption of results consists in its institutionalization along all dimensions (organizational, regulative, normative, and cognitive-cultural).
- foresight does not align well with the existing structures and procedures of the federal ministerial bureaucracy in Germany which are characterized by a strong departmental principle, resulting in ‘turf wars’ and ‘negative coordination’.
- The findings of our research suggest that a purely rationalist approach to the adaptation of foresight is inadequate.
This work represents the academic spin-off for an international readership of a study commissioned by the German Federal Chancellery and published in 2022.
--> https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/aktuelles/studie-strategische-vorausschau-2059782