Anticipatory & Adaptive Governance

Our practice of anticipatory governance focuses on the study and development of data-oriented practices. We aim to facilitate ways and means through which citizens, governments and public authorities can meaningfully use data for decision and policymaking to predict risks. The goal is to develop strategies and prepare adequately against those risks.

There is an urgent need for anticipatory governance in areas such as climate action, pandemics, cybersecurity, and economic development. However, research into this field has not kept up with public demands of anticipatory practices and uses.

In the course of our research projects at eGovlab, we illustrate how varying forms of Anticipatory Governance are enhanced by multi-scale regional networks and technologies as well as by the agency of individuals.

Adaptive governance is our research framework for analysing the management of shared assets. It is also a useful research framework guiding societies on building resilience against increasing challenges arising from global changes. We focus on analysing the different aspects that build up multi-level governance based on collaboration and deliberation.

A central tenet is that decentralised decision-making structures allow large, complex problems, like climate change, to be compartmentalised into several smaller issues, enabling more efficient science-to-policy projects. However, there are still many questions on how adaptive governance enables resilience, particularly in vulnerable and developing contexts.

At eGovlab, we work across a spectrum of regional contexts, ranging from Europe to Africa, where IT-based governance structures’ resilience is the focus loci of research for our critical analysis.