A Paradigm Shift in Democratic Governance? The OECD and the Governance of the Future

In 2020, OECD launched what it has called a revolutionary approach to governance, anticipatory innovation governance. Although there is a lot of research that has been conducted on complexity and futures research, the novelty of AIG is that a major international authority in the areas of public administration, higher education and research directs its focus on the future and the foreseeable consequences of current action. As OECD’s initiatives have often led to globally significant changes in public administration and more broadly politics and society (i.e. new public management), it is important to explore at the outset anticipatory innovations governance’s strengths and limitations as well as the problems it might give rise to. I will explore this question by starting with a presentation of OECD’s initiative, follow with a discussion of crucial but neglected approaches to anticipation and foresight, temporality and time-consciousness as well as prophecy and prediction, and finish with some critical remarks on OECD’s approach to anticipatory governance.