A futures perspective on constitutional governance
Constitutional governance today is framed and justified by concepts that arose in the 17th and 18th centuries. While the world's citizens, their technologies, and the ideas they embrace have changed a great deal since then, constitutional governance itself has hardly changed. Employing methods from futures studies, we anticipate that political change is very likely in the next few decades, but that political innovation is by no means guaranteed. Given the existing disadvantages in current forms of government, and accounting for the governance challenges societies will face in the years ahead, we need to promote a broad range of political innovation. To do this we need new frameworks and new design process. I propose a framework and process for designing governance systems that allows designers to incorporate leading edge ideas and that encourages a bottom-up approach that enables the greatest possible diversity in constitutional systems of governance. Keywords: futures; futures perspective; governance; futures studies; political change; political innovation; government; governance challenges; design process; constitutional governance; governance systems; constitution making, political design; foresight; scenarios; systems engineering. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Lum, R.A.K. (2016) `A futures perspective on constitutional governance', Int. J. System of Systems Engineering, Vol. 7, Nos. 1/2/3, pp.207233. Biographical notes: Richard Lum is the Founder of Vision Foresight Strategy LLC (VFS), a Hawai`i-based foresight and strategic analysis firm. As the head of VFS he works with for-profit, non-profit, and state organisations with developing foresight, strategy, and effective planning systems. In addition to his consulting practice, his professional interests include the futures of governance, global conflict, and industrialism. He has been published in the Journal of Futures Studies and the journal Futures, and his contributions...
