Expecting the unpredictable? The Strategic Governance of Long-term Risks

The purpose of this workshop is to examine the theoretical and comparative perspectives of strategic governance in the context of long-term risks, such as, for example, the effects of climate change on various policy subsystems. A long-term perspective of risks relates to causal chains that stretch over decades and centuries so that these risks become normal and often go unnoticed until they lead to catastrophes. Most consequences of long-term risks (in the case of climate change earlier spring planting of crops, higher prevalence of infectious diseases and enhanced risk of natural disasters) are already unavoidable or become unavoidable in the future. In this sense, the strategic dimension of governance relates to introducing mechanisms in order to expect and react to the unexpected inherent in long-term risks. Such mechanisms include anticipation and surveillance of potential risks as well as responding and adapting to identified risk scenarios.. This workshop intends to examine these issues through both theoretical and empirical papers. We are specifically interested in papers that pay attention to triggering events that open windows of opportunities for strategic planning as well as induce sequences in which adaptive measures are implemented. We would also like to invite scholars that focus on the role of science played in the policy networks and that explore the impact of scientific knowledge on realized strategies.