Futuring World Politics: The politics of foresight in International Organizations
In a time of resurging geopolitical conflict, looming climate disaster, rapid technological developments and deep contestion of international law and institutions, the future of international politics seems radically uncertain. Amidst this heightened sense of flux and polycrisis, political organizations on the world stage are re-evaluating how they think and act in relation to the future as a temporal register.
Start
2025-01-01
Planned completion
2028-12-31
Main financing
Research group
Project manager at MDU
About the project
Next to the proliferation of predictive and datafied technologies, contemporary global governance is marked by speculative and creative forms of future-oriented expertise that posit the future as multiple, contingent, and beyond the grasp of present knowledge.
This research project explores how such methodologies are enacted by contemporary International Organizations and it seeks to theorize the ontopolitics of speculative foresight. In doing so, it addresses an empirical research gap across Political Science, International Relations and neighbouring disciplines. It also contributes to theoretical innovation in these fields by drawing on performative theorizing on futures in social theory, historical future studies and critical historiography.
Empirically, the project explores the use and circulation of foresight expertise across global policy domains, such as security, global health and development. It adopts an interpretative retroductive research design that combines a variety of in-depth qualitative methods (interviews, policy document analysis and participant observation) with empirically grounded theorizing.
Project goals
The research project has two main aims:
- to investigate how foresight methodologies are enacted by contemporary International Organizations.
- to explore the ethico-political effects of speculative foresight.