Review "Principles of foresight-based policy analysis and stress-testing policy"

In an increasingly uncertain political environment, national parliaments and governments face an enormous number of challenges. The rapid development of technological innovations in the economy, new phenomena and circumstances of domestic and international politics, in particular, social upheavals caused by the significant deterioration of the state of the ecosystem and the depletion of natural resources, as well as climate change - all this can cause the formation of a future that is radically different from what is depicted in most forecasts.

If governments fail to adapt to this new reality, it will most likely lead to the deterioration of democracy and freedoms and the collapse of the system of good governance.

This analytical review focuses on how increasing the capacity of national parliaments and governments to apply strategic foresight and stress testing can increase the sustainability of selected public policies and provide clear answers to the following three questions:

1. What is the added value of strategic foresight and stress testing to effectively assess the impact of public policy and legislation at the national level?
2. What techniques and approaches for long-term threat resilience and stress testing, according to the available literature, can successfully complement the prediction of possible impact?
3. What good practices and useful examples from the experience of parliaments and governments over the last 10 years can be cited that would illustrate better approaches to ensuring resilience to emerging threats in the long term?

The purpose of this analytical review is to provide recommendations to national parliaments and governments on how they can strengthen their own capacity for strategic planning and stress testing by analyzing several potential trajectories of future developments in public policy-making.

Although there is a wide range of sources on intergenerational engagement, very little work addresses how to bridge the gap between the agenda-setting stage and the practices from which concrete policy proposals can be developed.

This analytical review examines case studies from the experiences of three countries, namely Finland, New Zealand and the UK, which were chosen primarily because these countries have implemented large-scale strategic foresight systems in the last few years.

All rights to this work, including copyright, belong to the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD). The publication was prepared by Douglas Torkell.

Analytical review "Democracy, resistant to threats in the long term. Principles of Predictive Policy Analysis and Stress Testing for National Parliaments and Governments' was first published in September 2022 with funding from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Translation of the review into Ukrainian is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government. The materials were published within the USAID RADA: Next Generation Program, which is a five-year initiative (2021-2026) implemented by the NGO "Internews-Ukraine".