Expanding anticipatory governance to legislatures: The emergence and global diffusion of legislature-based future institutions

Democratic myopia and corrective institutions

Due to the short-term motivations of electoral candidates, voters and interest groups, democratic political practice is commonly conceived as myopic (Boston, 2017, 2021; Jacobs, 2016; MacKenzie, 2021). Although actual policymaking that primarily focuses on developing general societal capacities in the long term has likely always been a more future-regarding endeavour (Pierson, 2004; Pollitt, 2008), the growing awareness of global societal ‘megatrends’ has recently introduced a surge of institutional designs that seek to relieve the myopic thrust of electoral democracy. Some innovations suggest re-allocation of state power to non-elected bodies (e.g. expert organizations) or legal instruments (fixed budgetary items or constitutional clauses, etc.) while others aim to enhance existing democratic institutions with, for example, special representatives, research centres and designated future committees (Boston, 2017, 2021; Caney, 2016; MacKenzie, 2021).

Regarding existing institutions, executives have invested many more resources into long-term planning, and established foresight mechanisms can now be found on most continents. In 1946, France set up the General Planning Commission (re-named in 2006 as the Centre for Strategic Analysis and in 2013 as France Strategy), an expert advisory body that produces long-term plans on various societally significant themes (e.g. trade, economy, environment) (France Stratégie, 2016). Today, countries utilizing such institutions include Canada (Policy Horizons Canada), Germany (Strategic Foresight and Policy Planning Division in the Federal Chancellery), Japan (National Institute for Science and Technology Policy), Singapore (Centre for Strategic Futures and Strategic Foresight Unit), Spain (National Office for Prospective and Long-Term Country Strategy), the United Arab Emirates (Future Foresight Strategy) and the United States (Center for Strategic Foresight in the Government Accountability Office) (School of International Futures (SOIF), 2021; Tõnurist and Hanson, 2020). The European Union (EU) has also started to invest more in strategic foresight: in the Commission appointed in 2019, one portfolio is Inter-institutional Relations and Foresight, leading to the Commission’s first annual Strategic Foresight Report in 2020 (European Commission, 2022). Governments drive policy planning and are thus ‘natural’ locations for foresight units. Another rationale for placing such units in the executive branch is perhaps to shield them from short electoral cycles. The downside can be marginal ownership among politicians, especially if the foresight unit is a quasi-independent research organization consisting of bureaucrats and/or scientists.

For these reasons, fostering ownership also among legislators is important. Claims for intergenerational justice can be legitimately (and realistically) instituted only through the participation of existing publics, which in representative democracy are represented by legislatures. Inside legislatures, institutions that enable legislators to develop sufficient expertise on foresight work matter. The logic is the same as with parliamentary committees: through their committee work, legislators develop expertise which facilitates more informed scrutiny of the government (Siefken and Rommetvedt, 2022). Without a profound understanding of governments’ future plans, legislatures cannot monitor them. And, even if only a small share of legislators is at any given time involved in such work, their influence can nonetheless extend to the whole parliament – that is, legislators engaged in future-oriented business will bring their insights into debates in party groups, committees and the plenary, making legislators more alert to the long-term effects of policies (Caney, 2016).

However, the emergence of a parliamentary future unit is likely to meet resistance. Legislators may feel that forward-looking planning is achievable without new mechanisms. ‘Future’ could be made part of standard legislative scrutiny more explicitly, with each government draft bill also including an assessment of its potential long-term effects. Thereby, a more forward-oriented thinking would form a routine part of the legislative process (Boston et al., 2019: 147). The danger is that both the government proposal and legislators might nonetheless focus on the short-term effects of laws. A more demanding alternative would be to oblige the government to produce a regular report on future challenges and, for creating ownership among legislators, mandate the legislature to produce a response and debate it in the committees and the plenary, giving it more publicity and connecting foresight more explicitly to the accountability of legislators (Caney, 2016).

Legislators may also feel that a foresight body would somehow be an odd, novelty element, detached from the usual, more serious parliamentary business and thus not worth the commitment. Sectoral legislative committees normally do not need to worry about their position: they are the backbone of parliamentary work. For a future organ the situation is considerably more challenging as it must prove its worth inside the legislature and more broadly in the political system.

Here, the existence of a broader ‘foresight ecosystem’ is important (SOIF, 2021). When there is a sufficiently large set of actors engaged in foresight work, the ecosystem will sustain itself through regular interaction and standardized outputs that disperse the processes’ institutionalizing capacity wider than a single institution could. Without such backing, even a well-argued project of highly motivated actors can easily be stopped by the institutional ‘conservatism’ of more established actors.

The emergence and activities of the pacesetter

After the horrors of World War II, as the first signs of the Cold War and the global environmental crisis were emerging, an international scientific interest in predicting, imagining and managing the future emerged (Andersson, 2018). Motivated by these developments and the adjoining efforts to develop TA capacity to parliaments, Finland started developing a comprehensive ‘foresight ecosystem’ that drew inspiration from the more eclectic, visionary and long-term emphasis of ‘futures studies’ (Miettinen et al., 1999; Tapio and Heinonen, 2018). The most advanced state foresight system, it is a strongly interconnected multi-level structure connecting the government, ministries and the parliament, as well as non-governmental organizations and regional authorities, into a coordinated process for producing foresight information (Boston, 2017).

The system’s centrepiece is the Committee for the Future, a permanent parliamentary standing committee comprising solely of Members of Parliament (MPs) with the exclusive task of studying the future. After its establishment in 1993, it gradually came to be considered a global pacesetter attracting international attention (Groombridge, 2006; Tapio and Heinonen, 2018). Boston (2017: 407–408) has noted that the long and difficult process leading to its establishment might explain why there are so few such institutions elsewhere in the world. We now briefly describe the process to illustrate the hurdles that initiatives for building a future institution into a legislature are likely to face, hurdles that also impact the dynamics of diffusion analysed in the second empirical section.

Reflecting the importance of agency, Pentti Malaska, a professor of electrical engineering at the Helsinki University of Technology and the ‘father’ of Finnish futures studies, played a foundational role in building support for the state foresight system. He established the Finnish Society for Futures Studies (FSFS) in 1980 and became its first chair (Miettinen et al., 1999; Tapio and Heinonen, 2018). Another important network was the Association of Researchers and Members of Parliament (Tutkas), founded in 1970 in the Eduskunta, which sought to educate MPs on scientific developments, especially on technological change and sustainability (Miettinen et al., 1999). In the 1980s, Tutkas had already discussed the creation of a foresight institution in the Eduskunta (Arter, 2000: 150). Further highlighting the importance of individual agency, two MPs played crucial roles in the process. Elected to the Eduskunta in 1983 and 1987 respectively, both Martti Tiuri (professor of radio engineering at the Helsinki University of Technology) and Eero Paloheimo (PhD from and later a professor of wood construction at Helsinki University of Technology) were concerned about the short-termism of parliamentary politics (Arter, 2000).

Tiuri and especially Paloheimo were instrumental in building cross-party support for the parliamentary future committee among MPs. The initiative met considerable opposition among leading public officials and in the Eduskunta, with critics claiming that such an institution was unnecessary, as ordinary committees could also do foresight, and the institution would not contribute to Eduskunta’s basic legislative work, but the broader societal context facilitated the project. Mainly due to the downfall of the Soviet Union, the strongly export-driven Finnish economy had slumped into its worst recession, which provided a further rationale for Finland joining the EU in 1995. The turmoil of the early 1990s has been generally considered as a central driver of the foresight system (Tiihonen, 2011). However, without the active agency of Malaska, Tiuri and Paloheimo, such institutions would not have emerged. The context only provided a ‘window of opportunity’.

Over time, the Committee for the Future has developed a set of distinct tasks and operating practices, which have inspired other legislature-based future units (Tiihonen, 2011). The key document of the Finnish state foresight system is the government report on the future delivered once per electoral term. The first such report was issued in 1993 and, to provide Eduskunta’s formal reply, the Committee for the Future was established, and the resulting ‘future dialogue’ became its formal-institutional ‘backbone’ (Tiihonen, 2011, see also Boston, 2017; Caney, 2016). In the late 1990s, TA became another official task of the Committee. In time, the task evolved into the Committee’s ‘own projects’, thematically more varied future-oriented research projects that MPs initiate and direct. The Committee may also issue formal statements on issues that other committees are scrutinizing and since 2018 it has served as the correspondent committee for the government’s Agenda 2030 report. In addition to becoming a formally recognized permanent committee in 2000, the Committee for the Future has institutionalized through its consolidated tasks and incentives that it offers to its members, which together foster internal cohesion and continuity. Due to its international fame, the Committee brings positive publicity to Eduskunta and it is now also valued by other MPs, making it a strongly institutionalized parliamentary committee (Koskimaa and Raunio, 2020.)

We interpret that the gradual broadening and consolidation of the Finnish ‘foresight ecosystem’ is relevant for the subsequent diffusion and (non-)survival of parliamentary future institutions. First, only as an institutionalized unit, with prolonged existence, could the Committee for the Future develop into a global pacesetter. Secondly, the broader foresight community is clearly relevant for both the emergence and survival of the Committee. Thirdly, however, the Finnish case with its historical-contextual and person-dependent factors underlines the significance of highly contingent conditions.

Since its emergence, the pacesetter has been actively networking around the world, contributing to the gradual diffusion of the model. Contrary to rational-functional models of institutional diffusion, however, our findings suggest a more random process and highlight the importance of creative agency at national level. According to one interviewee, the diffusion process has reminded the establishment of the Finnish Committee for the Future in the sense that international organizations have had no role in directing it. Instead, ideas spread more or less spontaneously among like-minded individuals via events and meetings that inter-parliamentary networks and other professional travelling have facilitated. The Committee for the Future, both its MPs and clerks, undertook ‘learning trips’ that all Eduskunta committees were expected and encouraged to take. The Committee’s first leading clerk, Dr Paula Tiihonen, significantly contributed to the Committee’s development and institutionalization during her tenure that lasted over two decades. Tiihonen had already established vast international networks before her appointment and she continued to maintain and expand them actively. For example, in the latter half of the 1990s the Committee became interested in the ‘Four Asian Tigers’ (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) that had performed exceptionally well – because of future-oriented thinking, the Committee interpreted. There was no ‘Great Commission’ to spread ‘the gospel’ of the Committee, the ideas spread rather spontaneously – also through visits by other Eduskunta committees or the networking activities of other Finnish foresight actors. ⁶

Eventually, as the Committee’s reputation grew and strategic policy planning and foresight gained more prominence in the 2000s, with its only institutionalized national foresight system Finland became a kind of a celebrity, a ‘place to go’, and travellers more often found their way to Eduskunta or invited the Committee for a visit. Finland transformed from an active sender into a passive example that others (receivers) actively sought to emulate. Again, the interviewees noted a semi-random diffusion pattern: sometimes the guests had only heard rumours and random stories about the Committee, so they decided to come and see what the fuss was about. Sometimes, there was ‘a future revelation’, an individual’s powerful realization of the potential benefits of organized future-regarding activities made in legislatures. In time, certain contacts stabilized and turned into clearer networks whose organization nonetheless remained highly dependent on active individuals.

As the next section demonstrates, strong bilateral bonds characterized the process, and many of the countries that have adopted the model are also geographically closely situated (a group of Nordic, South American and Far Eastern countries are clearly detectable). However, our findings indicate that personal contacts over a mutual interest created the links, not the other way round; that is, diffusion was not caused by existing bilateral links. As one interviewee noted, Finland’s neighbour and by far the closest historical ally, Sweden, has not developed anything comparable to the Finnish national foresight system despite centuries of close cooperation. To a lesser extent, the same applies to other Scandinavian countries (Norway and Denmark). Thus, proximate bilateral ties alone do not lead to diffusion. However, bilateral links might be more important for institutional diffusion in other contexts; for example, between less developed countries that seek ways to develop. South American cases, for example, may have been more influenced by close countries than by Finland directly. Nevertheless, the frequent interaction with it demonstrates that South American cases were also inspired by the Finnish example (see below).

In turning ideas to action, individual agency has been crucially important. Simultaneously, the dependence on individuals, either legislators or even parliamentary clerks, has constituted a weakness: strongly personalized ad hoc projects without a broader backing mechanism, especially on the politicians’ side, are subject to the wills of changing governing majorities, as the failed cases below demonstrate. To demonstrate the dynamics of diffusion and resistance, the following section examines the emergence of other parliamentary future institutions in chronological order.

The diffusion of legislature-based future institutions

Israel was the first country after Finland to experiment with a designated legislature-based future institution, the more limited future commissioner model, where a single person was appointed to protect the interests of future generations. As such, the case reflects the importance of creative agency under local conditions: the ‘transferred’ idea might take varying forms due to these forces. The Knesset Commission for Future Generations was established in 2001 and lasted until 2006. It was headed by a commissioner, Justice Shlomo Shoham, who was appointed for a five-year term. After that, no new commissioner was appointed and in 2010 the Knesset officially abolished the Commission. Importantly, the commissioner lacked support among the Israeli political-administrative elite and civil society. The Commission was largely initiated by a single politician, Joseph (Tommy) Lapid, the chair of the Shinui party, whose retirement from politics in 2006 coincided with the termination of the Commission’s work (Boston, 2017: 324–331; Shoham, 2010).

In Hungary a non-governmental organization, ‘Protect the Future’, had been campaigning since the 1990s for an institution looking after the interests of the future generations. According to an interviewee, a Hungarian UN official initiated a foresight unit under the UN with a broad societal scope and capacity to facilitate meetings of European parliamentary futures activists, where the Finnish representatives also participated. Inspired by this interaction, Marcel Szabó, a clerk in the Hungarian parliament, developed the national initiative further. In 2008 an Ombudsman for Future Generations (officially the Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations) was established, but only a few years later in 2012 the post was subsumed into the office of the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights, with more limited powers. The ombudsman failed to generate needed legitimacy among the decision-makers, and the party-political environment turned less supportive following the landslide victory of Fidesz in the 2010 elections (Anderson, 2018; Tóth Ambrusné, 2010) According to an interviewee, the ombudsman’s significant veto-like powers contributed to the diminution of the institution.

The long and difficult process in Finland, and the Israeli and the Hungarian cases reflect the significant barriers that a novel organ within an established institution faces. Indeed, although the Finnish future committee is globally well known and passionate foresight agents exist in many countries, only few legislatures have actually managed to establish such organs. Success – and the lack of it – seems predominantly connected to the broadness of the coalition that drives the initiative, especially among legislators. Although the exact motives of legislators opposing these initiatives are largely unknown, the Finnish case suggests that besides mere ‘organizational conservatism’, legislators likely seek tangible benefits from new organs that may be difficult to foresee in the rather high-minded work of future committees (see Koskimaa and Raunio, 2020).

Chile is clearly among those countries that have consistently invested resources in long-term decision-making (e.g. Aceituno Olivares, 2021; OECD/UN, 2018). The Committee on Challenges of Future, Science, Technology, and Innovation in the Chilean Senate was established in April 2012. On that occasion, the chair of the Finnish Committee for the Future, Päivi Lipponen, was invited to give a presentation in the Senate, and the Chilean committee was strongly inspired by the equivalent committee in Finland. Our interviewees also confirm representatives of the ‘pacesetter’ having several meetings with Chilean officials throughout the years. While an interviewee noted that the institution stands on a relatively narrow base, compared to Finland’s comprehensive foresight system, the sustained development suggests that it has created ownership among a broader group of actors. In nearby Brazil, the Committee for the Future in the Senate was established a year later in 2013. As in Chile, the main source of inspiration was the Finnish pacesetter committee, but there was also broader interest in foresight work. For example, from 2011 to 2013 the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars organized annual trips of Brazilian MPs to the United States and Europe to study policies and practices related to innovations (Wilson Center, 2013).

In Austria more encompassing foresight work has been carried out since at least the 1980s, involving the executive branch, academia and various stakeholders, and with active links to international organizations. Of the two chambers of the federal parliament, the Bundesrat established the Committee for Innovation, Technology and Future in 2015 while a fairly similar committee (without the ‘future’) is in the Nationalrat. In Estonia Lennart Meri, the country’s president in 1992–2001, was influenced by the Finnish experience, not least the Finnish Innovation Fund that has played a central role in the development of the Finnish foresight system. A Strategic Initiative Centre was established in the Bank of Estonia in 2000, and in 2006 another future-looking institution, the Estonian Development Fund, was founded and remained active for a decade. The Riigikogu created the Foresight Centre in 2016, and it became operational in 2017. Roughly one-third of MPs are involved in the Centre’s work through the lead committees, but otherwise the Centre is essentially a scientific think-tank attached to the legislature. Contacts with international foresight actors are important for the small Estonian foresight community.

According to our interviews, since at least the late 1990s South Korea has been one of the most active developers of state foresight capacity and engaged in frequent interaction with the Finnish Committee for the Future. Despite the enthusiasm, the resulting projects were short-lived and typically centred around people from business or public administration, making them highly vulnerable to changing political majorities. Reports by the OECD and other international networks have clearly influenced public policies and organizations, with high investment in research and development. The Korean government had a Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (2013–2017), but long-term planning posed serious challenges. In this context, in the 2010s two consecutive Speakers of the Assembly had argued in favour of establishing a parliamentary future committee. They both visited Finland during their terms as the speaker, and also the examples of Israel and Scotland were examined in the legislative process leading to the establishment of the National Assembly Futures Institute (NAFI) in 2018. A research institute instead of a parliamentary committee was introduced due to opposition from MPs and the Ministry of Finance.

Before 2018, foresight work in Iceland had been sporadic and ‘under the radar’, but since then there has clearly been a more concerted effort to raise the profile of strategic foresight. However, resources are limited and the circle of people small, and hence links with international foresight actors are important. ⁷ In June 2018 the prime minister appointed, in line with the government programme, a Committee for the Future located in the prime minister’s office. Icelandic proponents of foresight work had studied the Finnish foresight system and the Eduskunta committee very closely. Initially, the idea was to establish a parliamentary committee like in Finland, but as that would have required changes to legislation it was decided to locate the committee in the prime minister’s office. However, the MPs appreciated the work of the committee, and thus it was moved to the Althingi after the September 2021 elections.

According to an interviewee, in Argentina there was already an interest in developing foresight capacity in the 1970s. Nevertheless, it took until mid-2019, following the example of Chile, for the Argentine Senate to create a Future Commission. Here, the general diffusion process reveals an important new feature: the original idea may have to traverse a more proximate and similar national setting before it creates an impact. However, the Commission lasted only a few months, as upon the change of government in December it was discontinued. In 2012 the Philippine Center for Foresight Education and Innovation Research (PhilForesight) was established to advance futures studies and strategic foresight in the country. The idea was conceived at a UNESCO Laoag futures literacy knowledge lab forum-workshop. Building on this evolving foresight work, the Philippines’ Senate established in 2019 a Committee on Sustainable Development Goals, Innovation and Futures Thinking. Interaction, particularly with researchers and international organizations, has the goal of broadening the ‘futures’ community in the Philippines and of making it a more permanent part of the political system. Much of this activity is driven by the committee chair, Senator Pilar Juliana ‘Pia’ S Cayetano and her ‘Futures Thinking’ initiative.

The Committee for the Future in the Lithuanian Seimas was established in late 2020 with the aim of instilling a more strategic foresight culture into Lithuanian decision-making and to coordinate the process of preparing Lithuania’s long-term vision. Active collaboration with the government is envisioned, as well as wide-ranging consultation with the public and external stakeholders. The formation of the committee was influenced primarily by good practices in the legislatures of other countries, Finland included. Following the above-mentioned logic of ‘localized’ institutional diffusion, the Estonian case might have been significant for the Lithuanian initiative.

According to an interviewee, Uruguay is among countries that have exhibited a prolonged effort to create a future institution within its legislature. Unlike in many other South American countries, in Uruguay MPs eventually took ownership of the project, making it a serious effort. Despite problems with low resources that hindered exchanges with Finnish officials, the General Assembly, inspired by the Finnish model, finally established a Special Committee for the Future in 2021. As in the Brazilian case, the initiators of the committee were also likely impacted by the prior experiences in the continent.

Agents and networks of diffusion

Our analysis has uncovered interconnected diffusion patterns operating at three levels: country level, parliamentary level and individual level. In line with the learning and emulation models of diffusion, our findings underline both the role of a pacesetter that serves as a model to be imitated, and the broader salience of international contact networks in facilitating the spread of ideas. However, we must emphasize that the sheer complexity of the networks and the often informal nature of interaction between formative individuals made it very hard to locate exact causal mechanisms and the sequence of events. Notwithstanding the case of Finland, in many country cases even the interviewees themselves found it difficult to exactly locate the origin of future-regarding legislature-based institutions, as obviously the national-level actors also develop their ideas about foresight work through learning from abroad and they need to fit the ideas into their local context to make them successful.

On a more general, country level, international organizations, not least the OECD, have aimed to facilitate the global diffusion of state foresight mechanisms – by actively spreading relevant information and providing a forum for interaction. Foresight communities such as GFC offer a forum where like-minded politicians and public sector officials form networks and exchange ideas about best practices. The interviews and national documents refer to contacts with and guidance from the OECD, while reports from the international foresight community in turn champion those countries with existing foresight mechanisms, not least Finland. These reports clearly have their own ‘foresight discourse’, reflecting the role of active sender, which is then often repeated in the documents of national executives and legislatures. However, while the OECD and other international organizations now offer hands-on guidance and training, they have not aggressively promoted foresight work, and therefore more important has been the presence on the ground of actors with specific interest in long-term planning, emphasizing the facilitator role of the international organizations. However, our comparison also indicates that support from the OECD and other international networks has been more important for legislatures with fewer resources (such as Estonia, the Philippines or Iceland) or when the country is taking first steps in strategic foresight.

At the level of legislatures, bilateral contacts become more prominent. Here the activity of the pacesetter, the Finnish Eduskunta, has been crucial. Essentially all other legislature-based future institutions have been inspired by the Committee for the Future – also in their tasks and activities. The actors in the Finnish foresight ecosystem, including government officials, lobbies and researchers, have promoted the Finnish model, while MPs and clerks of the Committee for the Future have spread the word through interparliamentary networks and bilateral avenues. Instead of systematically ‘selling their product’, the MPs and clerks initially travelled abroad rather spontaneously, exchanging ideas with foreign colleagues, also for learning purposes as the case of ‘Asian Tigers’ shows. As the Finnish state foresight system became more widely known, visits to Finland became more numerous. Finland transformed from an active sender into an institutionalized example that active emulators sought to learn from in the vein of receiver-driven diffusion.

Formal interparliamentary networks like the IPU were less important for diffusion. Bilateral contacts mattered more, although they were largely formed during the diffusion process and not driven by them. However, the existence of regional networks in South America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay), northern Europe (Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Lithuania) and in the Far East (South Korea, Philippines) reflects the possibility of an intermediary impact of the local context. While the Finnish example has become well known and most countries have maintained active interaction with Finnish officials, in the final initiation phase existing examples from nearby countries may have been significant. In the larger picture, however, it is interesting to note how broadly the model has diffused: legislature-based future institutions now exist in countries that bear little resemblance in terms of geographical proximity and level of development. These countries may share some latent cultural-epistemic perception (on the importance of future-regarding action) that has pushed them to seek similar institutional solutions, but it cannot be confirmed with this analysis.

Perhaps the most intriguing finding, which the highly varied composition of countries also emphasizes, is the centrality of individual agency. This applies to the pacesetter as well as to all the other countries. Besides legislators or ministers, public officials, lobbies and even academics can play significant facilitating roles. Individuals’ interest in foresight and other future-regarding activities can stem from professional background, specialization in sustainable development or technological change, but, even without personal motivators, relevant networks can convince individuals of the added value of foresight work. However, while many types of individuals may propose initiatives, our cases clearly suggest that involvement of elected politicians is crucial for success. At least in democratic countries, the involvement of MPs is mandatory for creating new institutions inside legislatures and the lack of motivation among them appears to be the main reason why still so few countries have such organs.