Cosmos

ReFuture

ReFuture investigates the comeback of the need for political planning and its role in revitalising democratic governance. After decades in which politics was mainly interpreted as day-to-day administration, an era of impending emergencies requires to build new capacities: thinking about possible futures is key to maintaining democracy’s ability to act and plan vis-à-vis epochal challenges like climate change or the COVID-19 pandemic. The decline in the planning capacity that has characterised Western democracies since the end of the 20th century appears to be replaced by a resurgence of the need for political planning, in many forms, including institutional responses in the form of the Next Generation EU (NGEU) programme and increasing focus of grassroots civil society actors both on proposing alternatives to institutions and the public, and on practicing such alternatives in prefigurative experiences.