Publications
Reports, analysis and policy recommendations for brave leaders and communities.
The European Democracy Shield is a timely and commendable initiative aimed at addressing the EU’s growing democratic challenges. However, it would benefit from a more human-centered approach focusing on citizen participation, civil society engagement, and more nuanced policies on digital regulation.
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The answer isn’t less democracy, but more. New participatory and deliberative processes aimed at involving citizens in decision-making are gaining traction across Europe, but their long-term success depends on how well they are embedded into the public administration and society.
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How can countries strengthen their capacity for long-term governance and ensure that future generations are taken into account in decision-making? In this white paper, we highlight ways to promote anticipatory governance based on the views of key Finnish stakeholders. By translating the Finnish experience into a broader context, we aim to provide universally applicable strategies for advancing long-term governance and promoting intergenerational justice.
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Experimentalism is a ‘hidden third option’ that overcomes pre-existing dichotomies and can update the governance of R&I funding while steering it towards societal transformation.
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What are the most appropriate institutional arrangements for effective governance? How can governance systems effectively operate across different levels, such as local, regional, national, and supranational? How can governments improve their capacity to evaluate policies, learn from successes and failures, and adapt to changing circumstances? By transforming the civil service, we can answer these questions.
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In this discussion paper, written together with Marcos Bonturi, former director of Public Governance at the OECD, Demos Helsinki shares the recent learnings in the field of public governance, identified four characteristics that describe a desirable future government, and presents inspirational governance innovation -cases from Finland, Brazil, Colombia and Serbia.
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Achieving an impactful decrease in homelessness — and preventing it from happening in the first place — requires significant structural and operational changes. While Housing First holds great potential to enable systemic change in homelessness, it also risks being interpreted and deployed as a mere housing management tool — a misunderstanding of tragic consequences.
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This briefing paper is a reflection of the potential transformative role of distributed Ledger technologies (DLT) in the European public sectors, aiming to support civil servants and decision-makers to navigate the rapidly changing environment of new technological possibilities and required societal transformations.
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The neoliberal project is under pressure. However, years of discontent with the environmental risks and economic inequalities have not led to a collective and organised proposal for a new economic system. This report presents a landscape analysis of the organisations working in Europe to create an economic paradigm shift. Who and where are they? How are they contributing to this cause? What are the steps to foster a thriving and joyful movement that will create an economy that serves the people and the planet?
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We have a dare for you – A dare to governments, civil servants, leaders, and changemakers from all over the world to come together in defining a bold direction for the future of governance. Public governance of the industrial era was based on a set of principles that are now…
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Over the past decades, the term “smart city” has been used as a catch-all for various city development initiatives and concepts. With this joint Nordic Smart City Roadmap, we want to promote conceptual, ethical, and political guidelines that honor a more human-centric, inclusive, and collaborative approach to developing smarter and more sustainable communities.
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This white paper proposes an approach to the policymaking process that aims to renew how governments steer and regulate societies through Collaboration and Iteration. We call this approach Humble Governance.
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