Institutional Design and the Future

This paper examines ways in which democratic political systems can be structured in order to encourage decision-makers and citizens to take into account the interests of people in the future. How might we best reform political institutions to address this myopia, and to make them more sensitive to persons’ interests in the future? This paper addresses this question through the comparative analysis of 16 distinct policy proposals. It rejects some on the grounds that they are not likely to serve the goals well and others on independent normative grounds or on practical grounds. It endorses a raft of policies which, it is argued, embody the virtues associated with deliberative democracy. The right approach I argue is not – as some argue – to introduce non-democratic elements, but rather to embed practices which encourage people to focus on long-term impacts at the heart of the democratic process.