Science of Policy Making: Future Shaping
A new era of governance is emerging—where nations design, not predict, the future. Policymaking becomes a science of foresight, ethics, and imagination shaping civilization.
Across the world, a quiet transformation in governance is taking place. From the corridors of parliaments to the backrooms of data centers, governments are beginning to rediscover a lost art — the art of thinking in time. For decades, public administration has been dominated by short-term incentives, budgetary cycles, and reactionary politics. But as the complexity of global challenges multiplies — climate disruption, automation, demographic shifts, the rise of artificial intelligence — a new discipline is emerging. It is the science of policymaking for the future, where governments no longer manage the present but design the long-term conditions of survival and prosperity.
This new science is rooted in a single realization: the future must become a field of governance. For centuries, politics has been the management of resources and power within a fixed horizon. Now, that horizon itself is shifting — and states must evolve into institutions capable of anticipating, shaping, and safeguarding what is yet to come. The most visionary nations are therefore creating ministries of the future, foresight councils, and AI directorates, embedding imagination directly into their bureaucratic DNA. They are no longer asking, “What must we do now?” but “What must endure when we are gone?”
At the heart of this transformation lies a new kind of intelligence — one that fuses data, ethics, foresight, and design. The future is not governed by ideology but by cognitive capacity: the ability to sense weak signals, connect systems, and model outcomes across generations. Policymaking becomes not a contest of ideologies but a discipline of perception. The state turns into a learning system, continuously updating its understanding of reality through feedback loops between science, society, and technology. In this sense, good governance becomes indistinguishable from intelligence itself.
The leading examples of this shift form a constellation of institutions that together outline the architecture of the future state. The United Arab Emirates’ Ministry of Artificial Intelligence integrates technology with national identity, proving that governance can be both experimental and visionary. Finland’s Parliamentary Committee for the Future makes foresight a democratic habit, while Singapore’s Centre for Strategic Futures embeds scenario planning at the highest level of decision-making. New Zealand’s Wellbeing Budget, inspired by the idea of a Ministry for the Future, redefines success as the health of generations, not the accumulation of growth.
These examples are not isolated innovations — they are symptoms of evolution. They reveal a civilization beginning to think beyond the electoral cycle, beyond GDP, and beyond even human lifetimes. From Wales’ Future Generations Act to Japan’s Moonshot R&D Program, from Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Commission to Estonia’s Digital Republic, governments are developing the institutional equivalents of moral imagination. They are asking not only how to govern people, but how to govern time.
This new paradigm is as much spiritual as it is technical. It fuses the logic of systems engineering with the ethics of stewardship. Bhutan’s moral architecture complements Estonia’s digital architecture; Japan’s innovation missions echo Finland’s foresight culture. Together, they signal the birth of a planetary consciousness — a recognition that the fate of nations is bound not only by treaties and trade, but by shared foresight and shared morality. In this light, policymaking becomes a sacred responsibility: the act of ensuring that intelligence itself continues.
What emerges from this synthesis is a map of transformation. The science of policymaking is no longer about control — it is about cultivation: cultivating adaptive institutions, ethical technologies, informed citizens, and the wisdom to use power with foresight. The new ministries of the future are not merely bureaucratic structures; they are organs of civilization’s self-awareness, designed to keep humanity aligned with its highest potential. Their existence suggests a new epoch of governance — one where intelligence is collective, empathy is institutionalized, and the future, at last, becomes a matter of design.
Summary
1. The United Arab Emirates – The Ministry of Artificial Intelligence: Engineering the Future State
The creation of the UAE Ministry of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy, and Remote Work Applications in 2017 marked one of the most symbolically important innovations in modern governance. It was the world’s first acknowledgment that the future of intelligence—artificial and human—must be governed, not merely observed.
Under the leadership of Omar Sultan Al Olama, the UAE reframed AI from a technical revolution into a civilizational mission. Its purpose was to embed intelligence into every layer of society — education, health, infrastructure, transport, and governance itself. By merging AI, digital economy, and remote work under one umbrella, it treated them as parts of a single evolutionary system shaping productivity and human potential.
The Ministry represents a state-as-laboratory model: agile, visionary, and integrated. It coordinates across sectors, builds AI talent pipelines, sets ethical and legal frameworks, and promotes international collaboration. Its AI Strategy 2031 aims to position the UAE as a global hub of ethical technological progress, capable of aligning digital innovation with national values.
The UAE’s experiment redefines political ambition in the 21st century. It shows that the state can act not merely as regulator but as technological architect, guiding the design of intelligent infrastructure for both governance and business. Its greatest lesson is that the future should be institutionalized — not as prophecy, but as design.
2. Finland – The Parliamentary Committee for the Future: Institutionalizing Time
Finland’s Parliamentary Committee for the Future (PCF), established in 1993, is the world’s most elegant example of foresight turned into democratic routine. It operates on a profound idea: no democracy can be legitimate if it governs only the present.
The Committee acts as a standing body within Parliament that reviews all national strategies, budgets, and reforms through a long-term lens. It produces regular Future Reports analyzing social, technological, and environmental trends, ensuring that every policy is filtered through foresight and continuity.
What distinguishes the Finnish model is that it doesn’t treat the future as a technocratic domain but as a civic responsibility. The PCF engages citizens, scientists, and institutions in participatory foresight exercises, ensuring the long-term direction of the country reflects collective intelligence rather than elite prediction.
Over three decades, it has built a national culture of anticipation—one where ministries think in decades, schools teach futures literacy, and public debates routinely include generational implications. It is a quiet yet profound revolution: the conversion of democracy from reactive to anticipatory.
The Committee’s existence has inspired similar structures in South Korea, Singapore, and the EU. It teaches that foresight is not just about forecasting events but building temporal consciousness—a society capable of remembering the future as vividly as the past.
3. Singapore – The Centre for Strategic Futures: The Thinking State
Singapore’s Centre for Strategic Futures (CSF), founded in 2009 within the Prime Minister’s Office, stands as a global model for how to operationalize foresight at the heart of government. It was born from existential realism: a small island nation, without natural resources, must survive by outthinking uncertainty.
The CSF embodies this ethos. It trains policymakers in systems thinking, horizon scanning, and scenario planning; convenes inter-ministerial dialogues on emerging trends; and transforms foresight into institutional reflex. Every major Singaporean strategy—from water security to demographic policy—has roots in CSF-style futures analysis.
What makes CSF extraordinary is that it treats governance as a continuous learning system. Its analysts study weak signals—early signs of disruption—and simulate how different policies might perform in alternate futures. It sees uncertainty not as threat but as fuel for creativity.
By integrating foresight into bureaucracy, Singapore has created a government that behaves like a strategic organism, capable of sensing, learning, and adapting. It is a state built on cognition rather than ideology.
Its best practices—embedding foresight training across ministries, institutionalizing cross-sector collaboration, and maintaining “safe-to-fail” experimental spaces—make it the archetype of anticipatory governance. CSF demonstrates that the highest form of statecraft is intellectual discipline in motion.
4. New Zealand – The Ministry for the Future (Conceptual Mission): Moral Economics
While not a literal ministry, New Zealand’s Wellbeing Budget and Future Generations Framework embody the ethos of Kim Stanley Robinson’s imagined Ministry for the Future—a government that governs for time, not merely in it.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s government shifted the nation’s measure of success from GDP to intergenerational well-being, integrating mental health, environmental sustainability, and social cohesion into fiscal policy. The budget became a moral instrument — proof that economics could be reprogrammed to serve human flourishing rather than abstract growth.
This approach redefined fiscal responsibility as ethical foresight. Policies are now evaluated for their impact on future citizens, ecological resilience, and social equity. The government introduced well-being indicators across ministries, aligning short-term spending with long-term stability.
The philosophical core of this model is “ancestral thinking”—governing as if one were an ancestor, accountable to descendants. It represents Krznaric’s principle of “good ancestry” translated into state architecture.
New Zealand proved that empathy can be quantified, and compassion can be operationalized. It showed that a budget can become a manifesto for civilization — a declaration that the true wealth of a nation is the health of its people and the continuity of its ecosystems.
5. Wales – The Future Generations Commissioner: Ethics as Law
Wales made moral foresight legally binding. Through the Well-being of Future Generations Act (2015), it created the Future Generations Commissioner, an independent office with the authority to audit and challenge government policies that endanger long-term well-being.
This was a constitutional breakthrough: a mechanism ensuring that the unborn have representation in present-day decision-making. The Act enshrined seven well-being goals — prosperity, equality, health, cohesion, resilience, and global responsibility — and required all public bodies to plan and report according to them.
The Commissioner’s office acts as a moral compass within the machinery of state, ensuring that sustainability is not optional rhetoric but legal obligation. Its success is measured not by legislation passed but by decisions avoided—those policies halted or restructured because they failed the test of intergenerational justice.
Wales proved that ethics can be institutionalized. It created a democracy with a fourth dimension — time. Its greatest contribution is philosophical: the realization that responsibility to the future is not a metaphor but a function of law.
Its influence extends globally, inspiring Scotland’s and New Zealand’s well-being acts, and serving as a prototype for the UN’s discussions on future guardianship. Wales teaches that civilization matures when it gives morality an office.
6. Japan – The Moonshot Research & Development Program: Missions for Humanity
Japan’s Moonshot R&D Program, launched in 2020, reawakens the spirit of grand ambition in science policy. It defines moonshots—civilizational missions—to guide research toward humanity’s most complex challenges: AI-human symbiosis, climate neutrality, longevity without frailty, and sustainable ecosystems.
The program reframes innovation as collective imagination funded by the state. Rather than fixing market failures, Japan positions government as a risk-taker of last resort, funding breakthroughs that the private sector deems too uncertain.
Each moonshot is structured as a collaborative ecosystem of universities, startups, ministries, and global partners. Progress is measured by milestones that are both technical and ethical. It is not about chasing novelty but engineering hope.
The Moonshot framework has already influenced Europe’s “Horizon Europe Missions” and South Korea’s strategic innovation policy. It demonstrates that national R&D systems can combine bureaucratic rigor with exploratory freedom.
Japan’s model transforms the state from administrator to philosopher-engineer—an institution capable of designing both technologies and the values they serve. Its enduring message is that the future must be built with boldness equal to its uncertainty.
7. OECD – The Observatory of Public Sector Innovation: The Laboratory of Governments
The OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI) represents the collective intelligence of global governance. Established to capture, compare, and spread innovations across member states, it operates as the world’s policy laboratory.
Its central insight is deceptively simple: every government experiments, but few learn systematically. OPSI remedies that by curating methods, data, and case studies of successful innovations — from behavioral insights to AI regulation and participatory design.
It serves as a clearinghouse of methodologies that make innovation reproducible. Through frameworks like the Innovation Facets Model and the Anticipatory Innovation Governance framework, it teaches governments how to institutionalize creativity, measure outcomes, and normalize experimentation.
OPSI’s success lies in its ability to convert scattered brilliance into structured intelligence. It connects ministries, labs, and cities into an open-source ecosystem of governance.
Its contribution is conceptual as much as practical: the recognition that government itself is a technology, and that innovation is not an act but a system. OPSI is how humanity learns to upgrade its software of civilization.
8. European Union – Joint Research Centre (JRC) Foresight Unit: Continental Consciousness
The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) houses one of the world’s most sophisticated foresight operations. Its Foresight & Anticipatory Governance Unit functions as Europe’s brain — the place where scientific evidence meets political imagination.
The JRC’s mission is to infuse long-term thinking into EU policymaking. It produces horizon-scanning studies, scenario models, and strategic foresight reports that inform European legislation and funding priorities — from the Green Deal to the AI Act.
Its work embodies the belief that evidence and ethics must co-govern. Through initiatives like “Global Trends to 2040” and “Future of Government 2030+,” it translates complex data into narratives that policymakers can act upon.
The JRC’s deeper contribution is metaphysical: it transforms a geographic union into a temporal union. By aligning 27 nations through shared foresight, it replaces reactive policymaking with coordinated anticipation.
Its approach shows that democracy scales not by power but by perception — when nations see the future together, they act as one. The JRC’s success is thus not only analytic but symbolic: the creation of a continental consciousness capable of thinking in centuries.
9. Bhutan – The Gross National Happiness Commission: The Moral Architecture of Progress
Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Commission (GNHC) is the world’s most advanced model of moral economics. Established to implement the country’s philosophy of Gross National Happiness, it institutionalizes the idea that development is only meaningful if it expands human well-being.
The Commission screens every national plan and budget through four pillars: sustainable development, environmental conservation, cultural preservation, and good governance. Its work operationalizes compassion — aligning national modernization with spiritual depth.
The GNH framework is quantitative yet humanistic: it measures psychological well-being, community vitality, and ecological balance alongside economic metrics. It treats the mind and nature as co-dependent systems of prosperity.
The results are remarkable. Bhutan remains carbon-negative, politically stable, and socially cohesive. It has become a global reference point for well-being-oriented governance and has influenced the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Bhutan teaches that civilization’s highest intelligence is ethical coherence — the ability to design systems where kindness becomes an instrument of progress. Its legacy is not technological, but spiritual: the demonstration that happiness can be governed with precision.
10. Estonia – The Digital Republic: Coding Democracy
Estonia’s Digital Republic is the most advanced example of digital-state architecture in the world. Born from necessity after regaining independence in 1991, Estonia decided not to rebuild an old bureaucracy but to code a new one.
The X-Road infrastructure became the backbone of this system: a decentralized, secure data exchange layer connecting government, businesses, and citizens. Every citizen receives a digital ID; nearly all public services — from voting to healthcare — are conducted online.
This transformation was not merely technological but philosophical. Estonia redefined trust as a form of infrastructure. By giving citizens control over their data, it created a feedback loop of transparency and confidence. Bureaucracy disappeared into the background; the state became a platform.
The benefits are staggering: efficiency gains equivalent to 2% of GDP annually, near-total elimination of corruption, and digital resilience proven by its recovery from cyberattacks. The e-Residency program extends Estonian digital citizenship globally, redefining what a nation can be.
Estonia’s model shows that the architecture of democracy can be recompiled for the digital age — open, secure, and adaptive. It teaches that when governments embrace code not as control but as collaboration, they evolve into living systems capable of learning, healing, and scaling human freedom.
The Analysis
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES — MINISTRY OF STATE FOR ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, DIGITAL ECONOMY, AND REMOTE WORK APPLICATIONS
The Idea
The UAE became the first nation to appoint a Minister of Artificial Intelligence in 2017, led by Omar Sultan Al Olama.
The idea was simple but revolutionary: if AI is going to transform every aspect of human life, it must also transform government itself.
Rather than treating AI as a domain of the private sector or academia, the UAE elevated it to a ministerial level — signaling that technology governance is now statecraft, not engineering.
The underlying philosophy: the state should not wait to regulate AI after it changes the world; it should co-create the future of intelligence with its citizens and industries.
The Mission
The ministry’s mission is to make AI a national capability, not just a tool.
Its goals are threefold:
Integration: Embed AI across every ministry and sector — health, education, transport, energy, and public administration.
Innovation: Build a domestic AI ecosystem by supporting startups, research centers, and educational programs.
Governance: Establish ethical, legal, and safety frameworks for the responsible use of AI.
Essentially, it seeks to create an AI-literate society where both government and business operate through augmented intelligence.
The Goals
Economic diversification: Transition from oil dependency to a knowledge-driven, digital economy.
Human capacity building: Educate a generation of data scientists, engineers, and policymakers fluent in AI ethics and implementation.
Global competitiveness: Position the UAE as an international hub for AI governance and digital innovation.
AI in governance: Use machine learning to make the state predictive, efficient, and responsive.
Resilience and flexibility: Prepare the country for remote work, automation, and post-industrial labor markets.
What We Can Learn
Political symbolism matters. By naming a “Minister of AI,” the UAE turned technology into a matter of national identity.
Institutional coherence beats fragmentation. Instead of scattering AI projects across agencies, the UAE centralized vision and coordination.
Leadership narrative defines momentum. The ministry became a rallying point for the entire region, attracting talent and investment.
Government can innovate structurally. By merging AI, digital economy, and remote work, the UAE recognized that these domains are interdependent.
Successes
Policy innovation: Creation of the UAE AI Strategy 2031, outlining national goals and investment streams.
Institutional acceleration: Establishment of the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) — the world’s first AI-dedicated graduate university.
Global reputation: The UAE became a key voice in international AI ethics debates and UN working groups.
Public service transformation: Machine learning systems began to optimize traffic, energy consumption, and administrative processing.
These successes transformed the country into a prototype for AI governance — proving that a small state can move faster than global tech giants when it has directionality.
How to Shape the Future Using Their Best Practices
Create dedicated ministries for transformational technologies. Treat them as governance domains, not tools.
Align national identity with innovation. Use narrative and vision to build societal consensus around technological change.
Invest in human talent as infrastructure. Universities and schools are as critical as data centers.
Lead globally on ethics. Regulation is no longer reactive; it is a form of global diplomacy.
Institutionalize experimentation. Make pilot programs and sandboxes permanent features of the bureaucracy.
In essence, the UAE’s model teaches that the state can be a start-up — agile, experimental, and morally ambitious — if it designs technology as part of its constitutional fabric.
FINLAND — PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE FOR THE FUTURE
The Idea
Finland is the first country in the world to make foresight a constitutional responsibility.
Since 1993, the Parliamentary Committee for the Future has served as a standing committee that examines long-term trends, risks, and opportunities across all sectors.
Its central idea: democracy cannot be legitimate if it governs only the present.
Foresight must be a public good — not a privilege of think tanks or corporations.
The Committee doesn’t simply predict; it institutionalizes anticipation. It ensures that every law, every budget, and every reform is weighed against its impact on future generations.
The Mission
The Committee’s mission is to make futures thinking a civic discipline.
It serves as a bridge between research, politics, and the public imagination.
Its objectives are to:
Embed long-term thinking into parliamentary work.
Evaluate the foresight of all government programs.
Promote education and participation in futures literacy.
Issue national Future Reports that synthesize scientific, social, and technological trends.
The Goals
Sustain democratic legitimacy through foresight. Decisions gain trust when citizens know their grandchildren’s interests are included.
Create a permanent learning loop between science and politics.
Anticipate disruptions before they occur — climate change, automation, demographic shifts.
Normalize futures dialogue in public institutions, schools, and media.
Build a shared temporal identity — citizens who feel part of a continuous civilization, not an isolated moment.
What We Can Learn
Foresight can be democratized. Finland proves that long-term thinking is not elitist; it can be a participatory habit.
Institutionalization ensures continuity. The Committee is part of Parliament, not a temporary advisory board.
Education is the foundation of resilience. By teaching futures literacy, Finland builds a self-updating society.
Transparency multiplies trust. Public reports, open hearings, and media dialogue ensure legitimacy.
Successes
Enduring foresight culture: Over 30 years of uninterrupted operation — a global precedent.
Policy alignment: Finnish industrial, educational, and innovation policies are guided by future-oriented evaluation.
Crisis readiness: Finland’s strong anticipatory culture helped it respond effectively to the 2008 financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and emerging AI challenges.
International influence: Other nations, including South Korea and Singapore, modelled similar foresight institutions after Finland’s structure.
The Committee has quietly become the moral compass of Finnish democracy — proof that small, consistent institutions can create long-term stability in an unstable world.
How to Shape the Future Using Their Best Practices
Institutionalize foresight as a permanent democratic function. Embed it in parliaments, not side offices.
Build literacy before bureaucracy. Teach citizens how to think about futures, not just experts.
Integrate science and governance. Futures reports must merge data with imagination.
Make foresight participatory. Invite citizens and youth councils into scenario discussions.
Normalize intergenerational dialogue. All policies should be tested for effects on future generations.
Finland teaches that democracy without anticipation is blindness — and that to govern the future, nations must first learn to think like time itself.
SINGAPORE — CENTRE FOR STRATEGIC FUTURES
The Idea
Singapore’s Centre for Strategic Futures (CSF), established in 2009 within the Prime Minister’s Office, is one of the most sophisticated government foresight units in the world.
It was born from a recognition that Singapore’s survival depends on thinking ahead further and faster than its vulnerabilities — scarcity of land, water, and natural resources, and a volatile global economy.
The core idea: in a small nation without margin for error, foresight is not an accessory — it is an operating system.
The Centre’s motto captures this perfectly: “Anticipate Change, Stay Resilient.”
It doesn’t forecast the future as prediction but as preparation: identifying systemic risks, mapping weak signals, and cultivating the mental flexibility of policymakers.
The Mission
The CSF’s mission is to embed futures thinking into the heart of government.
It builds strategic foresight capacity across ministries, trains civil servants in scenario planning, and translates complexity into usable intelligence for decision-makers.
Its goal is to ensure that every policy is designed with awareness of multiple possible futures — not just the most probable one.
It serves both as a research lab (developing foresight methodologies) and a convener (hosting inter-ministerial dialogues on emerging issues like AI governance, climate adaptation, and geopolitical shifts).
The Goals
Build cognitive resilience: Equip leaders to make sense of uncertainty rather than fear it.
Institutionalize foresight: Make long-term thinking routine in policy cycles.
Integrate complexity science: Model interdependencies across the economy, environment, and society.
Bridge generations: Ensure institutional memory does not harden into rigidity.
Detect early signals: Identify trends before they become crises or opportunities missed.
What We Can Learn
Foresight must be embedded, not outsourced. Every civil servant becomes a futurist in training.
Anticipation needs culture, not just data. The CSF invests heavily in mindsets — training leaders to be comfortable with ambiguity.
Collaboration multiplies intelligence. The Centre connects academia, startups, and international think tanks into one “foresight commons.”
Continuity protects agility. By operating under the Prime Minister’s Office, it has the authority and stability to think across electoral cycles.
Successes
Scenario-based policymaking: Singapore’s urban planning, water management, and demographic strategies were all informed by foresight exercises.
Pandemic readiness: Decades of scenario planning enabled swift response during COVID-19.
Cross-ministerial integration: Foresight units were established in ministries of education, environment, and finance based on CSF training.
Global model: Other countries (UAE, Finland, Canada) now cite CSF as a benchmark for anticipatory governance.
The CSF turned foresight into muscle memory — transforming Singapore’s bureaucracy into an adaptive intelligence network.
How to Shape the Future Using Their Best Practices
Train every policymaker in futures literacy. Make anticipation a core civil service skill.
Institutionalize horizon scanning. Maintain dedicated teams for emerging risk monitoring.
Build “safe-to-fail” labs. Encourage small experiments rather than waiting for large crises.
Use systems mapping in policymaking. Model cross-sector dependencies before committing to reform.
Foster a foresight culture. Reward curiosity and long-term perspective in leadership evaluations.
Singapore shows that the state can be as agile as a startup — if it invests not in slogans, but in mental infrastructure.
NEW ZEALAND — MINISTRY FOR THE FUTURE (Conceptual Mission)
The Idea
Inspired by Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel The Ministry for the Future (2020), New Zealand has quietly become the real-world testbed for many of the book’s principles.
While it has not created a literal “Ministry for the Future,” its Wellbeing Budget, Climate Commission, and Future Generations Framework collectively act as a functional equivalent:
an attempt to govern for well-being and planetary stability rather than GDP growth alone.
The conceptual idea is that modern governments must represent not only their current citizens, but also future citizens and ecosystems — granting them political voice through law, metrics, and moral commitment.
The Mission
The mission is to redefine what counts as success in governance.
Where traditional policy optimizes economic growth, New Zealand’s model optimizes intergenerational well-being — social cohesion, mental health, ecological balance, and long-term fiscal prudence.
It applies Krznaric’s principle of “good ancestry”: political decisions must be judged by how they serve those yet to be born.
The Goals
Measure well-being, not just output.
Institutionalize intergenerational equity — ensure that budgets and laws include future impact assessments.
Rebuild trust through transparency — citizens must see how their taxes translate into collective flourishing.
Align economy and ecology. Sustainability becomes a central pillar of fiscal policy.
Global leadership in moral governance. Prove that compassion and competitiveness can coexist.
What We Can Learn
Metrics define morality. Changing what we measure changes what we value.
Foresight needs fiscal translation. Budgets are the most powerful moral documents of government.
Public trust grows from sincerity. When citizens see genuine care for well-being, cynicism declines.
Soft power through ethics. Values-based governance attracts global respect and investment.
Crisis as opportunity. New Zealand used financial and environmental crises to reimagine policy frameworks rather than defend the old ones.
Successes
Wellbeing Budget (2019–2024): Introduced well-being indicators into national budget allocation.
Mental Health Reform: Redirected funding from growth sectors into mental and social resilience.
Climate Leadership: Established the Climate Commission and net-zero legislation aligned with future generations’ rights.
Civic trust: Among the highest levels of trust in government globally.
New Zealand transformed the budget — the most technocratic instrument of power — into an ethical manifesto. It redefined the economy as a moral system.
How to Shape the Future Using Their Best Practices
Redefine success metrics. Build dashboards that integrate social, ecological, and psychological indicators.
Embed intergenerational reviews in all legislation. Future citizens must be implicit stakeholders.
Use budgets as strategic levers for moral reform. Allocate money according to human flourishing, not just growth forecasts.
Lead by example internationally. Show that ethical governance can drive economic stability.
Combine empathy with evidence. Make compassion measurable and accountability moral.
New Zealand’s model teaches that governing well means thinking like an ancestor — building systems so generous and stable that the unborn will call them wise.
WALES — FUTURE GENERATIONS COMMISSIONER
The Idea
In 2015, the Welsh Parliament passed the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act, a legislative innovation unlike any other in Europe.
It created the Future Generations Commissioner, an independent statutory body tasked with ensuring that today’s policies do not compromise the ability of future citizens to meet their own needs.
It transformed a moral intuition — that governments should think long-term — into a legal obligation.
The idea was to operationalize the concept of stewardship. Wales asked: if future generations cannot vote, who defends them?
The answer: create an institutional advocate whose entire job is to safeguard the unborn through accountability, oversight, and foresight.
The Mission
The Commissioner’s mission is to embed sustainable development as the core organizing principle of government.
It acts as a guardian of the future, reviewing public policies, advising ministers, auditing implementation, and ensuring that all public bodies align with seven well-being goals defined by law — including prosperity, resilience, equality, health, and cohesive communities.
The purpose is not symbolic: the Commissioner has the legal authority to challenge and correct policy misalignment. Wales, therefore, invented something remarkable — a democracy with an explicit intergenerational branch.
The Goals
Institutionalize intergenerational justice.
Hold government legally accountable to the future.
Embed sustainability across all policy domains.
Promote systems thinking in decision-making.
Build public participation and awareness of long-term impacts.
What We Can Learn
Ethics can be codified. The Welsh Act shows that moral responsibility can become constitutional design.
Future thinking needs enforcement, not just inspiration. Mandating foresight transforms rhetoric into discipline.
Public participation sustains legitimacy. The law emerged from citizen consultation, not technocratic decree.
Sustainability requires measurement. Every policy’s future impact must be quantifiable and comparable.
Small nations can lead global innovation in governance. Scale does not determine sophistication.
Successes
Legal precedent: The Act inspired similar initiatives in Scotland, Ireland, and New Zealand.
Policy alignment: Public spending and procurement were redesigned around sustainability goals.
Global influence: The UN recognized the Act as a model for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Public awareness: Future generations discourse entered schools, local councils, and media.
The Welsh model demonstrates that the moral dimension of governance can be institutionalized without paralyzing decision-making — by giving ethics structure, it turned virtue into process.
How to Shape the Future Using Their Best Practices
Create future ombudsmen or commissioners within every government.
Legislate intergenerational impact assessments for all major policies.
Codify foresight as a right of future citizens.
Use sustainability goals as constitutional pillars.
Institutionalize learning loops where each generation reviews the stewardship of the last.
Wales proves that democracy matures when it learns to listen to people who have not yet been born.
JAPAN — MOONSHOT RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM
The Idea
Launched in 2020 by Japan’s Cabinet Office, the Moonshot R&D Program was designed to counteract one of the biggest risks in advanced economies: innovation fatigue.
It recognized that incremental R&D can no longer address civilization-scale challenges — from aging societies to climate change.
The idea was to rekindle the spirit of the Apollo-era “moonshot”: high-risk, high-reward missions that unite scientists, industry, and government around shared, audacious goals.
This approach explicitly adopts Mazzucato’s thesis of mission-oriented innovation — public investment as the engine of transformation, not just market correction.
The Mission
The mission is to accelerate transformative innovation that benefits society as a whole through targeted national “moonshots.”
Each mission defines a bold societal challenge (e.g., creating a sustainable global environment, achieving AI-human symbiosis, extending healthy life expectancy) and mobilizes R&D funding, talent, and cross-sector collaboration to pursue it.
The program’s design shifts Japan’s science policy from supporting existing industries to inventing new ones.
The Goals
Create 6–10 civilization-level missions by 2050.
Encourage radical, not incremental, innovation.
Align public research with ethical and societal goals.
Integrate universities, startups, and corporations in open innovation ecosystems.
Make innovation visible, purposeful, and human-centered.
What We Can Learn
Boldness is an organizing principle. Incremental innovation yields diminishing returns; missions reinvigorate ambition.
Government must lead in uncertainty. The public sector can de-risk innovation and mobilize industry behind shared goals.
Missions unify society. They turn anxiety about the future into energy for progress.
Science needs storytelling. Each moonshot is not just technical — it’s cultural, inspiring a shared national imagination.
Accountability by design. Missions have measurable milestones, ensuring transparency and adaptability.
Successes
Concrete missions launched: e.g., “Realization of AI Robots that Learn and Coexist with Humans,” “Sustainable Global Environment through Satellite-Based Technologies,” “Human Augmentation for Aging Societies.”
Cross-sector collaboration: Ministries, universities, and corporations work as integrated teams.
Cultural revival: Public excitement for science and technology rebounded; young researchers re-engaged with national goals.
Global recognition: The Moonshot Program influenced similar frameworks in the EU (“Horizon Europe Missions”) and South Korea.
Japan proved that imagination can be structured — that even large bureaucracies can behave like explorers if they are given permission to dream.
How to Shape the Future Using Their Best Practices
Define national missions around existential challenges (climate, AI ethics, aging, inequality).
Design multi-stakeholder ecosystems that bind government, science, and industry.
Fund “impossible goals.” The payoff is not guaranteed, but the learning is.
Make missions public symbols. Use storytelling to unite citizens behind research.
Treat failure as discovery. Institutionalize risk as part of innovation culture.
Japan’s Moonshot Program demonstrates that the state can be a philosopher and engineer simultaneously — designing both technology and the meaning behind it.
OECD — OBSERVATORY OF PUBLIC SECTOR INNOVATION (OPSI)
The Idea
The OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI) was founded to answer a quiet but urgent question: how do governments learn?
While every nation experiments, few systematically document, compare, and replicate successful reforms. OPSI, housed within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, functions as a meta-institution — a global brain for governance innovation.
Its idea is that the public sector should not lag behind the private sector in experimentation. Government, too, must have R&D. OPSI provides that missing infrastructure — a space where bureaucracies can share prototypes, methods, and evidence for what works.
The Mission
The mission of OPSI is to make innovation a repeatable function of governance, not an accident of leadership.
It does this by curating, testing, and spreading innovative practices across member states — from behavioral insights to digital transformation and anticipatory governance.
It collects data, builds frameworks, runs labs, and produces comparative studies on how governments evolve.
The Goals
Transform governments into learning organizations.
Build a global knowledge base of public innovation methods.
Accelerate adoption of anticipatory and human-centered design.
Evaluate public sector innovation through metrics and case studies.
Foster international cooperation in experimentation and foresight.
What We Can Learn
Innovation must be systemic, not episodic. OPSI creates structures that ensure experimentation is constant, not crisis-driven.
Governments can co-learn globally. The problems of digitalization, aging, and inequality are universal — so should be their solutions.
Methodology is power. OPSI’s frameworks (like its Innovation Facets Model) give officials language and structure for creativity.
Neutrality builds trust. As a multilateral platform, OPSI enables countries to learn without political competition.
Public value is measurable. Innovation can be assessed not only by novelty, but by the improvement of citizen outcomes.
Successes
Global innovation repository: Thousands of cases from 70+ countries accessible for replication.
Policy labs movement: Catalyzed national and local innovation labs (e.g., Denmark’s MindLab, Chile’s Laboratorio de Gobierno).
Anticipatory innovation governance framework: Introduced tools for policy foresight, adopted in Finland, Estonia, and Austria.
Cross-pollination: Influenced the European Commission, UNDP Accelerator Labs, and numerous national digital offices.
OPSI became the world’s commons of policy intelligence — the first time governments began collectively upgrading themselves like an open-source system.
How to Shape the Future Using Their Best Practices
Build meta-labs. Every region needs a hub for collecting and sharing innovation data.
Adopt standardized foresight frameworks. Shared language accelerates global cooperation.
Benchmark progress publicly. Transparency drives reform and pride in improvement.
Create incentives for experimentation. Reward ministries for taking calculated risks.
Make learning visible. Publish every pilot, success or failure, as civic knowledge.
OPSI teaches that governance itself can be a science — if nations treat learning as the ultimate infrastructure of the state.
EUROPEAN UNION — JOINT RESEARCH CENTRE (JRC) FORESIGHT & ANTICIPATORY GOVERNANCE UNIT
The Idea
The Joint Research Centre (JRC) is the European Commission’s in-house science and knowledge service, and its Foresight & Anticipatory Governance Unit is where the EU’s long-term intelligence resides.
Its purpose is to bridge the gap between science and policy, translating complexity into actionable strategic insight for the European Parliament and member states.
The idea emerged from a structural necessity: the EU governs across 27 diverse economies, requiring a shared, data-driven understanding of future trends.
The JRC’s foresight unit functions as the collective consciousness of Europe — a scientific body that monitors, models, and narrates the continent’s possible futures.
The Mission
The mission is to mainstream foresight and anticipatory governance into EU policymaking.
It develops long-term scenarios, horizon-scanning tools, and trend analyses to support strategic planning in areas like energy, AI, migration, and digital transformation.
Its work ensures that regulation and funding align with emerging realities rather than outdated assumptions.
The Goals
Create a shared European foresight culture.
Integrate scientific foresight into policymaking.
Provide early warnings on systemic risks.
Support cross-sector coordination across member states.
Connect foresight to legislative and financial instruments (e.g. Horizon Europe).
What We Can Learn
Science is governance. Without scientific capacity, democracy loses its predictive intelligence.
Anticipation strengthens unity. Shared foresight helps 27 nations act coherently on global issues.
Evidence must be emotionalized. JRC’s visual foresight reports translate data into stories policymakers can act on.
Distributed intelligence outperforms central command. Anticipatory governance networks across ministries make foresight resilient.
Global issues need continental-scale intelligence. Climate, migration, and technology require supranational forecasting.
Successes
Global Trends to 2040 and 2050 Reports: Comprehensive analyses shaping EU strategy in climate, demography, and technology.
Horizon Europe Missions: Adopted foresight frameworks to design research funding with social impact.
Strategic foresight reports: Annual documents now mandatory for all European Commission work programs.
Policy coherence: The Green Deal, AI Act, and resilience frameworks all draw on JRC foresight outputs.
The JRC foresight unit turned science into diplomacy — uniting nations not only by treaties, but by shared perception of time.
How to Shape the Future Using Their Best Practices
Institutionalize foresight inside executive structures. It must sit beside finance and defense in priority.
Fund anticipatory research. Long-term modeling must precede policy, not follow it.
Integrate scientific and ethical foresight. Data alone is insufficient; moral framing gives it direction.
Communicate futures visually. Foresight must be understandable to politicians and citizens alike.
Create international foresight councils. Shared futures build shared stability.
The European model teaches that a union of nations is ultimately a union of foresight — and that scientific imagination is the foundation of collective sovereignty.
BHUTAN — GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS COMMISSION
The Idea
Long before “well-being economics” became a global trend, Bhutan pioneered a radical thesis: development without happiness is failure.
In the 1970s, the Fourth King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, declared that the nation’s success would no longer be measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but by Gross National Happiness (GNH) — a multidimensional model integrating material, emotional, cultural, and environmental well-being.
To operationalize this philosophy, Bhutan established the Gross National Happiness Commission (GNHC) — a central policy body that screens all government plans, budgets, and laws through the lens of happiness and sustainability.
The idea is simple yet profound: the economy exists to serve human flourishing, not the other way around.
The Mission
The GNHC’s mission is to institutionalize holistic well-being as the guiding principle of governance.
It ensures that every public policy contributes simultaneously to economic prosperity, social harmony, environmental preservation, and cultural continuity.
It transforms spiritual ethics — compassion, balance, mindfulness — into administrative processes.
The Goals
Reorient national success metrics toward well-being and sustainability.
Mainstream happiness indicators across all sectors.
Balance modernization with cultural preservation.
Protect ecological and psychological resilience.
Embed mindfulness and compassion in decision-making.
What We Can Learn
Metrics create meaning. What a nation measures, it values. GNH turned philosophy into accountability.
Happiness is governance. Emotional and mental well-being can be legitimate state priorities.
Culture is infrastructure. Preserving spiritual and communal life stabilizes modernization.
Policy needs moral philosophy. Bhutan built a technocracy of kindness — where data meets dharma.
Simplicity is power. By focusing on happiness, Bhutan sidestepped the complexity paralysis of GDP-centric policymaking.
Successes
Global model: The UN adopted Bhutan’s GNH concept in its World Happiness Reports and Sustainable Development Goals.
Environmental leadership: Bhutan remains carbon-negative — the only country absorbing more CO₂ than it emits.
Social stability: Despite limited resources, it sustains high literacy, life expectancy, and civic trust.
International influence: GNH inspired “Well-being Economies” initiatives in New Zealand, Scotland, and Iceland.
Bhutan proved that spiritual intelligence can scale into policy — that compassion can be systematized without losing authenticity.
How to Shape the Future Using Their Best Practices
Create well-being indices to complement GDP at national and regional levels.
Embed cultural and emotional metrics into national planning frameworks.
Train policymakers in mindfulness and empathy.
Treat ecology as emotional economy. Environmental care is psychological stability.
Build diplomacy around moral leadership. Influence through virtue, not dominance.
Bhutan teaches that the future of governance lies not only in smarter systems, but in wiser souls — leaders who understand that happiness is the ultimate form of resilience.
ESTONIA — DIGITAL REPUBLIC AND X-ROAD GOVERNANCE INFRASTRUCTURE
The Idea
When Estonia regained independence in 1991, it faced a daunting challenge: how to govern a small nation with limited resources but high ambition.
Its answer was revolutionary: rebuild the state as a digital republic.
Instead of copying 20th-century bureaucracies, Estonia designed a 21st-century operating system for governance — X-Road, a decentralized data-exchange infrastructure that connects all public and private databases securely and transparently.
The idea was to make government a platform, not a pyramid — a programmable, interoperable, user-centric system that treats citizens as co-owners of data and processes.
The Mission
The mission was to digitize the state end-to-end: identity, services, voting, taxation, healthcare, education, and even democracy itself.
By building a single digital backbone (X-Road), Estonia eliminated duplication, corruption, and inefficiency.
It turned administration into automation and bureaucracy into code.
At its core lies a profound belief: trust can be engineered.
The Goals
Universal digital identity for every citizen.
100% availability of public services online.
Full transparency and citizen data ownership.
Interoperability between government, business, and citizens.
Global export of digital governance models.
What We Can Learn
Design governance like software. States need versioning, APIs, and security updates.
Trust is the new currency. Digital transparency builds civic confidence.
Small nations can leapfrog giants. Estonia’s agility made it a global testbed for governance innovation.
Public-private co-creation is key. The same engineers who built e-banking built e-government.
Security and sovereignty are intertwined. Data integrity became the new national defense.
Successes
Universal digital identity: 99% of public services accessible online, including voting.
Efficiency gains: Saved 2% of GDP annually in administrative costs.
Digital resilience: Rebuilt systems after massive cyberattacks through decentralized infrastructure.
Global influence: Estonia exported its model through the e-Residency program and inspired the “Digital Nation” movement.
Estonia became a state-as-platform — proving that democracy can be efficient, transparent, and innovative without sacrificing liberty.
How to Shape the Future Using Their Best Practices
Adopt interoperable digital architectures. Replace silos with shared data layers.
Institutionalize cybersecurity as public trust.
Empower citizens with data control dashboards.
Treat government software as open-source infrastructure.
Create digital twin states. Model policies in virtual environments before implementing them in the real world.
Estonia teaches that the next phase of democracy is code — not as a tool of control, but as a medium of empowerment, where governance becomes participatory, precise, and perpetually upgradable.
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