Topic

Public governance

Commentary

How to introduce a wellbeing economy model

Finland pioneered a governance model for the wellbeing economy, integrating social and planetary wellbeing. Its approach involves broad stakeholder involvement and political prioritization. To implement it elsewhere, countries must tailor localized governance models. Finland’s experience highlights the importance of holistic, multi-stakeholder approaches and integrating ecological goals into policy frameworks.

What are syndemics, and why do they matter in health governance?

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted how health crises are interconnected with political, social, and economic factors. Syndemic theory explains how overlapping health and social issues, like poverty and violence, worsen each other. Applying this concept to future health governance could improve decision-making by considering broader societal impacts and fostering resilience.

What is the Collingridge dilemma and why is it important for tech policy?

The Collingridge dilemma highlights the challenge of regulating new technologies due to limited early knowledge and entrenched systems later. Experimental governance offers a solution through early, continuous collaboration between stakeholders, fostering transparency and trust. This approach helps co-develop accountable and equitable technologies while addressing societal risks.

Let’s rethink: A vision for digital platforms

Digital platforms have the potential to support meaningful governance and strengthen civil society. By leveraging their precision, transparency, anticipatory abilities, and capacity to incentivize behaviors, platforms can play a central role in addressing societal challenges like climate change and inequality. However, conscious efforts must be made to steer platforms away from solely benefiting businesses and toward empowering citizens, fostering pluralism, and enabling collective action. The next few years are critical in determining how platforms will shape the future of governance and civil society.

The climate crisis is a governance crisis

Governance must evolve to effectively tackle the climate crisis. Current systems, rooted in the industrial era, are inadequate for addressing the scale of transformation required. Empowering individuals, ensuring coherence in climate action, and delivering meaningful policies are essential. Additionally, global collaboration and systemic change are critical for achieving sustainable solutions and addressing the climate emergency.

Towards systemic innovation: how foresight can help organizations transform

Across private and public sectors, key industries such as food production, energy, transportation, communication and materials, all face a series of significant challenges. The sustainability gap is vast, as a result of what we call transformative failure. The solution is transformations that are not only economically viable but also consider…

Publications

Generative Shared Intelligence: A direction for governments in the uncertain environment of the late 2020s

The notion of a “polycrisis” has become a defining feature of contemporary governance, and traditional administrative methods are increasingly inadequate. In this publication, Professor Sir Geoff Mulgan’s concept of “Generative Shared Intelligence” offers a model for addressing multidimensional problems in governance, emphasising the need for more flexible and collaborative structures designed for the sole purpose of sharing intelligence.

Report: Towards experimentalist R&I funding

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.

A new ethos for the civil service

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.

Projects

Circular Economy Green Deal – a steering instrument for collective action towards circularity

The Circular Economy Green Deal is a novel Finnish steering instrument that catalyses collective action for systemic change towards circularity based on voluntary commitments. Demos Helsinki had the honour of leading the co-creative process that led to the creation of the Circular Economy Green Deal.

KT4D: Fostering democracy through knowledge technologies

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems can undermine democracy via the cultural disruptions they create, the power dynamics they shift, their tendency toward opacity, and the speed at which they change. The KT4D project investigates how democracy and civic participation can be facilitated in an era of rapidly changing knowledge technologies — such as AI and big data, thereby mitigating the risks of such technologies and identifying how they can be used to reinforce democratic governance and trust in public institutions.

Sustainability Governance in the City of Tallinn

Demos Helsinki and the City of Tallinn, the European Green Capital 2023, joined forces to create an innovative approach to sustainability governance in cities. Together, we embarked on a journey to develop the concept of sustainability governance, aware that cities could hold the key to fostering sustainable transformation and have…

People

Themes