long-term perspective

This special issue analyses and reflects on relations between long term perspectives and strategies in governance. While dismissing high modernist planning and acknowledging constraints to long-term policies, the different contributions in this volume, each in their own way, contend that strategy is necessary to face the challenges of our times. The fifteen articles highlight different aspects of the possibilities of and limits to strategy in governance, to turn long-term perspectives into strategy and strategy into reality. They all examine how long- term perspectives and issues are constituted by different governance practices and emerge in rather different policy contexts, which points to the need to better understand the diverse interplay between strategy, long-term perspectives and patterns of policy integration. Furthermore, the contributions emphasize how long-range governance requires careful attention to issues of temporality, the management of uncertainty and the interplay between the short term and the long term.

Van Assche, K., Verschraegen, G., & Gruezmacher, M. (2021). Strategy for the long term: pressures, counter-pressures and mechanisms in governance. Futures.

This paper reflects on the performance and endurance of long-term perspectives and their impact on strategies, institutional change and material effects. In the past decades, the long-term perspective of a national ecological network has been a key element of Dutch nature conservation policy. By focusing on the temporal, procedural and discursive dimensions of Dutch nature conservation, the analysis shows that long-term perspectives can function as powerful coordination tools, across government levels and due time. Conversely, their actual realization often proves vulnerable to the multiple dependencies built into governance processes, including competing claims about the future and related strategies. In the context of Dutch nature conservation policy, we witness a growing discrepancy between the long-term perspective on the one hand and strategies, institutional changes and material effects on the other. We subsequently examine the underlying conditions which enabled the long-term perspective of a national ecological network to endure through time and still play an important role in the policies and actions of public and private organisations. The network of actors, institutions and material realities emerging over time provides the long-term perspective with some critical mass, while it also explains its disposition to change over time.

Beunen & Barba Lata (2021). What makes long-term perspectives endure? Lessons from Dutch nature conservation. Futures 126 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2020.102679

International Institute for Innovation in Governance

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Strategy for the long term

What makes long-term perspectives endure? Lessons from Dutch nature conservation

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