Can the big idea of EU integration become a reality?
By Carnegie Europe, 2017
When Emmanuel Macron was elected President of France, his first official visit was to Berlin. This long-established tradition is supposed to reaffirm the special relationship that Germany and France forged soon after World War Two when they established the European Coal and Steel Community, the precursor of today’s European Union. But Mr Macron’s visit was more than symbolic. He was in Berlin to inform Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, about his plans to reform the French economy – and the eurozone group of 19 countries.
Regions 2020. The Climate Change Challenge for European Regions
By European Comission, 2009.
There is growing evidence that greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are causing climate change. Over the last 100 years, the global average surface temperature has increased by 0.74°C, and sea level has risen by 17 cm during the 20th century. Current trends are projected to continue and accelerate in the coming decades. Europe will also be increasingly confronted with the impact of climate change. Climate change will come about gradually in the form of average temperature increases, with the main impacts of gradual changes being felt in the long term. However, the impact of more frequent extreme weather events will be felt in the short and medium term.
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EU Assigns Funds and Staff to ‘Eastern Partnership
By EU Observer, 2009.
With EU leaders putting €600 million in the pot for the Eastern Partnership, the European Commission is mulling over how to assign personnel to run the new project.
The Attractiveness of European Regions and Cities for Residents and Visitors
By ESPON, 2012.
The objective of this project is to investigate territorial attractiveness and its spatial dynamics. It will set out ways by which the concept of comparative territorial attractiveness both can be described, modelled, understood and used by regional policymakers. In achieving this, the concept can be better integrated into the spatial planning toolbox. Better conceptualisation and measurement of territorial attraction will contribute insights into how the ESPON programme (as well as a wider range of European Union policy documents) can help build a more competitive and cohesive Europe following from the ESDP that preceded it.
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Transatlantic Trends. Key Findings 2013
Constanze Stelzenmueller, 2013.
This is the 12th Transatlantic Trends survey; it started in 2002 as World Views. Over more than a decade, Transatlantic Trends has become the preeminent source of U.S. and European public opinion on a host of transatlantic issues, including foreign policy challenges, support for NATO, the economy, and the rise of other world powers. The data provided by the survey have become an invaluable tool for policymakers, the media, think tanks, and academics. In addition to producing original research, the survey’s goal is also to foster debate on the strategic policy goals, objectives, and values of the United States and Europe as members of the transatlantic community. The 12 years reflected by our polls have been tumultuous for both Europe and the United States, shaped for a long time by a marked divide about the U.S. intervention in Iraq, the alliance’s role in Afghanistan, and the global economic crisis. Increasingly, the poll also shows a deepening North-South divide within Europe — at a time when publics on both sides of the Atlantic appear to be drawing closer together again.
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Future Global Shoks. Improving Risk Governance
By OECD, 2011.
The International Futures Programme’s project on “Future Global Shocks” originated in 2009 with a series of consultations among partners focusing on follow-up work to the decade-long research into risk management. The awareness of risk management in government and the private sector has risen dramatically in recent years. Large-scale disasters have been recognised as challenges to public policy, usually at the national or regional level. The concept of “global shocks” takes account of a different pattern of risk: cascading risks that become active threats as they spread across global systems, whether these arise in health, climate, social or financial systems. Little work has been done on risks present in large-scale system interdependencies and the propagation of risks across global systems. Among the more important findings of this work for public policy is recognition that surveillance has now emerged as a key component in risk assessment and management. New knowledge management tools, modelling and data arrays provide unprecedented opportunities for anticipating some important global threats, and are increasingly sought by public policy managers worldwide. Secondly, there is a heightened role for security agencies in collaboration with regulatory agencies to use, adapt and implement risk-assessment tools in designing more resilient systems at the national and international levels. This report contributes directly to highlighting these new trends.
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Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds
By National Intelligence Council, 2012.
Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds is the fifth installment in the National Intelligence Council’s series aimed at providing a framework for thinking about the future. As with previous editions, we hope that this report will stimulate strategic thinking by identifying critical trends and potential discontinuities. We distinguish between megatrends, those factors that will likely occur under any scenario, and game-changers, critical variables whose trajectories are far less certain. Finally, as our appreciation of the diversity and complexity of various factors has grown, we haveincreased our attention to scenarios or alternative worlds we might face. We are at a critical juncture in human history, which could lead to widely contrasting futures. It is our contention that the future is not set in stone, but is malleable, the result of an interplay among megatrends, game-changers and, above all, human agency. Our effort is to encourage decisionmakers—whether in government or outside—to think and plan for the long term so that negative futures do not occur and positive ones have a better chance of unfolding.
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Migration and Global Environmental Change
By The Government Office for Science UK, 2011.
This report examines both global and within-country migration trends. It finds that: millions will be 'trapped' in vulnerable areas and unable to move; people are as likely to move towards areas of environmental risk as to move away; but also that migration can transform people's ability to cope with environmental change. Environmental change will affect migration through its influence on economic, social and political drivers – which themselves affect migration. However, the range and complexity of the interactions between these drivers means that it will rarely be possible to distinguish individuals for whom environmental factors are the sole driver ('environmental migrants'). Nonetheless, there are potentially grave implications of future environmental change for migration, requiring a strategic approach to policy that acknowledges the opportunities provided by migration in certain situations. People are as likely to migrate to places of environmental vulnerability as from these places. For example, compared to 2000, there may be between 114 and 192 million additional people living in floodplains in urban areas in Africa and Asia by 2060.
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Surfing the sixth wave. Exploring the next 40 years of global change
Finland Futures Research Centre, 2012.
University of Turku
This is an interim report of the project ¨The Sixth Wave and Systemic Innovations for Finland: Sucess Factors for the Years 2010-2050¨. The report brings together our findings during the first year of our project.
The report comprises the first results of the theorical work, based on a comprehensive literature review of previous K-wave studies, and an analisys of key technologies and societal issues. The potential implications of these factors for Finland are explored in the context of established Finnish industries and emerging new fields, taking into account the technological and societal trends that pose challenges for the continuation of status quo.
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2nd EFP Annual Mapping Report: Security Futures
By European Foresight Platform, 2012.
This report represents deliverable 2.4, of the EFP project. The report discusses the key findings and lessons from the examination of 16 FLAs mapped in the area of security research. After exploring the features of the mapped cases across the different mapping variables the report tries to identify similarities and differences and to provide an overall picture of the type of research and outcomes carried out in the area of security.
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Global Europe 2050
European Comission, 2012.
We can rise to the Europe 2020 challenges of dealing with an ageing population, securing sustainable resources, developing clean energy supplies, improving healthcare and combating climate change – but only if we take effective short, medium and long term action. This is why the European Commission asked twenty five leading analysts to look into the future and workthrough a number of scenarios to see where the EU might be in 2050. Their work, presented in this Global Europe 2050 report, analyses three key scenarios which describe different but nonetheless possible pathways that Europe could choose to follow over the decades to come.
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The World in 2025. Rising Asia and socio-ecological transition
User Rating: 5 / 5
By European Comission, 2009.
Recent developments in the world and the strong European commitment to a regulating globalization argue in favor of a forward looking analysis. This publication underlines major future trends: geopolitical transformations in terms of population, economic development, international trade and poverty. Secondly, it identifies the likely tensions: natural resources (food, energy, water and minerals), migrations or urbanization. It also defines possible transitional pathways: towards a new production and consumption model, towards new rural-urban dynamics, towards a new gender and intergenerational balance.--Publisher's description.
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San Francisco livinglab
User Rating: 3 / 5
Living Labs Global Award 2011
San Francisco is seeking international solutions that make best use of our newly opened infrastructures and data and combines these with other technical and service innovations to deliver our Next Generation of Government, to create better public services with decreasing budgets, involving more stakeholders and citizens in the process. The City launched its Open Government initiative over a year ago. One of the first projects, DataSF is a Web 2.0 clearinghouse for sharing data with the public. Anyone can visit the website; and once there, they will find links to raw, structured and machine readable datasets created and maintained by the City and County of San Francisco. Additionally, visitors to the website can comment, rate, vote and request new datasets and applications, mash-ups or wikis made with the data
Global Report 2009 Conflict, Governance, and State Fragility
User Rating: 3 / 5
Center for Systemic Peace. Center for Global Policy, 2009.
This report provides macro-comparative evaluations of contemporary conditions, qualities, and trends over time in the three dimensions of societal-systems analysis at the global level. These performance evaluations are intended to better inform our audience of the changing circumstances of the global system in the emerging era of globalization and to gauge and monitor system resilience in its constituent units. In so doing, we hope to provide a more accurate basis for considering the system’s imperatives and future prospects.
Visit Center for Systemic Peace site
| Global Report 2009 Conflict, Governance, and State Fragility | [ ] |
Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-2008
User Rating: 4 / 5
Center for Systemic Peace, 2010
The Polity IV Project continues the Polity research tradition of coding the authority characteristics of states in the world system for purposes of comparative, quantitative analysis. The original Polity conceptual scheme was formulated, and the original Polity I data collected, under the direction of Ted Robert Gurr; the Polity scheme was informed by foundational, collaborative work with Harry Eckstein, Patterns of Authority: A Structural Basis for Political Inquiry (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1975). The Polity project has proven its value to researchers over the years, becoming the most widely used data resource for studying regime change and the effects of regime authority. The Polity IV Project carries data collection and analysis through 2008 and is under the direction of Monty G. Marshall at the Center for Systemic Peace and George Mason University.
Value for citizens. A vision of public governance in 2020
User Rating: 3 / 5
European Commission, 2009.
The need for open, conscious and empowered governance, to make the best use of all the resources and skills society has to offer in the interest of producing public value, is already widely recognised. Looking ahead to 2020, we need to ensure that ICT deployment will reach its full potential in optimising the way societies are governed and operate, and measuring this through increases in both personal and public value.
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Democracy Beyond the Nation State? Transnational Actors and Global Governance
User Rating: 3 / 5
Christer Jönsson
Lund University, 2008
The rationale of global governance arrangements, and their principal source of legitimization, has traditionally been their capacity to address joint problems and generate benefits for states and societies. Yet, in recent years, international institutions institutions and other public arrangements have increasingly been challenged on normative grounds, and found to suffer from democratic deficits (Held and Koenig- Archibugi 2005). Issues that previously were the domain of democratic decisionmaking at the national level have been shifted to the international level, but the means of decision-making at this level to a large extent remain the exclusive preserve of state officials and international bureaucrats, with limited opportunities for participation by civil society actors.
| transdemosStvTidskr.pdf | [ ] |
Governance Democracy and Development in the Least Developed Countries for the Future
User Rating: 3 / 5
United Nations Development Programme
UN Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries,
Landlocked Developing Countries and the Small Island Developing States, 2006
Governance for the Future: Democracy and Development in the LDCs is the first United Nations Report to focus specifically on the challenges of governance faced by the 50 poorest nations in the world, collectively known as Least Developed Countries (LDCs). Jointly prepared by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and the Small Island Developing States (UN-OHRLLS), this publication emphasizes that to achieve sustainable development, LDCs must build transparent, accountable and effective democratic governance systems. Building a strong relationship between the state and its citizens is key to successful development and to achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
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Better Governance: An outlook on a transparent organisational model
User Rating: 3 / 5
Ministry of Flanders, 2001
Optimising the workings of its administration has become the top priority of the administrative policy of the Flemish Government. A special meeting dedicated exclusively to this subject was held in Louvain on Fevruary 2000.
| better_gov.pdf | [ ] |
