Title: A futures perspective on constitutional governance

Authors: Richard A.K. Lum

Addresses: Vision Foresight Strategy LLC, 1635 Palolo Avenue, Honolulu, HI 96816, Hawaii, USA

Abstract: 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 perspective; futures studies; political change; political innovation; government; governance challenges; design process; constitutional governance; governance systems; constitution making; political design; foresight; scenarios; systems engineering; politics.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSE.2016.076123

International Journal of System of Systems Engineering, 2016 Vol.7 No.1/2/3, pp.207 - 233

Received: 11 Jan 2015
Accepted: 15 May 2015

Published online: 26 Apr 2016 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article