How to involve future generations in current policy?

During the Covid pandemic, governance expert Marij Swinkels completed her thesis on leadership in long-term crises. She was also pregnant at the time. And like every young parent, she thought: “In which world will I let my child grow up?” She started her research into how we can make space for the long term in public governance.

Swinkels uses an innovating way of doing research. She works with Future Design, a method in which you ask people explicitly to put themselves into a period in the future, as if they stepped into a time machine. These people receive questions about how we can do things differently in the present. Swinkels says: “We then see very different kinds of ideas come to the forefront. More creative. People who participate can, for instance, combine various problems AND solutions with each other better.”

Court of the Future

Together with theatre makers and a designer, Swinkels developed ‘The Court of the Future’. A research project into the relationship between political trust and the support for long-term climate policy in the form of participation theatre. “Here, you really see what a mental time travel does with people,” Swinkels tells. In a fictional court case, ‘the future’ sues ‘the past’ for ecocide: the act of willingly contributing to global warming. The audience plays along and is assigned roles, for instance as a glacier, bird, tree or human in the future. There are also participants who represent the past: they become the state, the corporate world and the citizenry. A third group plays the jury. Swinkels says: “They enter the courtroom where dystopian sounds play and where they are welcomed into 2118. The charge is read aloud and the pleas are prepared under the supervision of lawyers (actors). It’s very captivating to see humans who play the future REALLY ‘experience’ being a glacier. After three rounds of pleas, the jury retreats and passes judgement. We see that the people who play the present mostly reproduce the current story about climate change. But those who have put themselves into the future are actually capable of making a new story. They disconnect themselves from the current climate narrative. The ‘Court of the Future’ creates good awareness of how stuck the climate debate is. And what it also shows: if we cannot succeed in making a different story, this will be the consequence.” 

Long-term thinking is a quality of good public governance

Just imagine…

What will go wrong in – say, 2086 – if this kind of research is not continued? Swinkels says: “Then it might just be possible that we have lost our ability to imagine a different world. If we remain stuck in short-sightedness, with all the associated consequences for democracy, then I fear this will have consequences for approaching the big long-term issues of our time. It is inherent to human nature to want to make plans for the future and be capable of making them. We just sometimes seem to forget how to do that.” Swinkels continues: “Long-term thinking is a quality of good public governance. If we can do this insufficiently, it contributes to further democratic erosion. That’s why my research is relevant now.”

From distrust to hope

The experiment behind ‘The Court of the Future’ showed lost trust in institutions: “The Court deals with guilt and responds to the emotion of fear.” This is why in her follow-up research, Swinkels moves the focus: “Currently, the question is more: how do you ensure people get out of the hopeless and fearful story about climate and look at the future with hope? Can you help people to make a story that there are other possibilities? And does that help them to relate to a subject in a different way?” Swinkels continues: “I'm not saying it's my future vision, but Rob Jetten's success in the last campaign may have been in part about sketching a different, hopeful future. Future thinking may have possibly also played a role in his campaign.” For the new prime minister, Swinkels does have tips: “Trust that voters can handle long-term choices and that they want to accept them. Dare to tell an alternative story about the future. Make public governance future capable. The current issues have consequences for us in 2086: civil servants have to know this tension field and act on it.” 

Institutionalising future thinking

Swinkels actively involves the people she does research for in her research: “Not afterwards, but already during the research.” She talks with people from political parties, municipalities, provinces. One example of what they want to know is how you can apply techniques for future thinking in policy processes. “I enter into that conversation. To me, reciprocity and collecting is the ultimate form of academic communication. A form nobody actually sees but which is happening.” For instance, one such conversation resulted in the plan to develop a training course on future thinking for municipal council members. Swinkels says: “We can then also immediately connect research to that, for instance on how municipal council members view future thinking.” She says: “I actually want to know: what really works? Institutionalising future thinking is tricky. But I want the work forms we're currently researching to become normal practices in public governance. And I can then say in 2086: ‘Look, if civil servants consider now where a new railway track has to be built, they not only call on engineers, but also involve artists who help them to think differently.’” 

What moves you as a person is actually allowed to have an influence on what you research

The personal is also academia

Finally, Swinkels wants to tell something else: “In between all this, I also try to raise two children. That's important, because part of my academic drive comes about from personal fascination and interests. The famous feminist slogan is: ‘the personal is also political’. My addition would be: ‘the personal is also academia’. In education, we sometimes try to make academics into little machines. We try to separate the personal from the academic. I work 100 % from academic standards. But what moves you as a person is actually allowed to have an influence on what you research. The despair of a flawed future perspective during Covid and bringing a child into the world: it was my motivation to do this kind of research. Let's put these drives centre stage in education more often as well. My wish is that we REALLY make space for the long term in public governance. Because without that, we soon won't have a future anymore.” 

Text: Floor Peeters