POLICY DEVELOPMENT IN COMPLEX SOCIETIES By Erik F. Øverland
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As methods and techniques for policy development, the foresight approaches should be further developed and specially adapted to a politicaladministrative landscape.
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N a world marked by increased complexity and non-reliable forecast methodologies, foresight and futures studies are getting more and more important for governments and political-administrative systems. In this fluctuating and rapidly changing world, we need to avoid being victims of ‘shorttermism’. Therefore governments need to strengthen their capacity to think futures in new and innovative ways. » This is roughly how Dr Helge Braun, Angela Merkel’s former chief of staff, put it when he opened the 24th World Congress of the World Futures Studies Federation WFSF in Berlin on October 26 last year. That a prominent politician placed in the middle of the inferno of short-termism, the Prime Minister’s Office (Kanzleramt), is so clear in his message to change the art of policy development is indicative of the development we are in. Helge Braun, who was Chancellor of the Chancellery in Merkel’s government, emphasises the importance of future thinking in politics and administration Photo Tobias Koch CC.
HUMAN FUTURES
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