Designing Institutions for the Future

Democracies are commonly diagnosed with over-discounting the future due to wrongful short-termism. Wrongful short-termism arises out of many institutional, cultural, and anthropological factors (Boston, 2016; Caney, 2019), among them the election cycle, the influence of special interest groups and the ineptitude of humans to deal with ‘creeping problems.’ In this paper, I devise criteria for the design of institutions that help overcome wrongful short-termism – institutions for the future (F-Institutions) – and show that certain types of deliberative institutions meet these criteria. First, I give an overview of the drivers of wrongful short-termism. Second, I develop a set of principles for the design of F-Institutions: a) effectiveness, b) political accessibility, c) institutional sustainability, and, d) moral legitimacy. Thirdly, I argue that a) sets of F-Institutions are likely to outperform single institutions and b) deliberative mechanisms should be employed by at least some institutions within the set. There is scarcely any reliable evidence regarding the effectiveness of the hitherto installed institutions. Given the lack of data, I argue that a minimum requirement for all proposals for F-Institutions should be that they explain how they would mitigate the effect of some of the drivers of wrongful short-termism, possibly by showing that similar mechanisms have worked in other domains. Regarding political accessibility, I maintain, amongst other things, that we should consider the institutional context carefully in order to evaluate the political accessibility of a proposal. Installing ombudspersons, for example, is a proposal fit for Scandinavian countries who have traditionally used such systems, while other forms of institutions might fit better in other circumstances. Sustainability captures the resilience of the institution against potential abolishment or disempowerment. This criterion is important as we can gather from the F-Institutions in Israel and Hungary that their feeble legal grounds and the lack of ability to generate their own support, arguably, resulted in their downgrading or abolishment. Moral Legitimacy reflects the commitments to principles of procedural and substantive justice. Mitigating wrongful short-termism must be weighted against a loss or gain in moral legitimacy that is likely to result from installing F-Institutions. Building on these criteria and the analysis of wrongful short-termism, I argue that it follows that it is unlikely that a single institution for the future will mitigate wrongful short-termism. Instead, sets of F-Institutions should be installed. This is advantageous, as sets of F-Institutions can work hand in hand and are more likely to reduce the effects of many of the various drivers of wrongful short-termism. Furthermore, I argue that at least some F-Institutions that employ deliberative means should be installed as these are particularly well suited to mitigate the effect of some of the biases that make it difficult for the present to give appropriate consideration to the future. References Boston, J. (2016). Governing for the Future: Designing Democratic Institutions for a Better Tomorrow Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing. Caney, S. (2019). Democratic Reform, Intergenerational Justice and the Challenges of the Long-Term. CUSP essay series on the Morality of Sustainable Prosperity, (11). Retrieved from cusp.ac.uk/essay/m1-11