Public Futures Studies: Themes and Variations

In 2004 Futuribles, in partnership with the Aleph group of the French Commissariat général du Plan, launched a series of articles with the aim of enlightening readers about what is happening in other countries in the area of futures studies. Seven articles have been published, presenting the main national specialist bodies and the approach to strategic thinking guiding public decision-making in various countries (Germany, Japan, Sweden, South Africa, etc.).
To round out the series Bruno Hérault analyses the methods used in other countries: which topics are most commonly examined? How are they treated? What kind of lessons are learned? While being careful to avoid hasty benchmarking – whereby what works in one country is applied to another even though their situations are quite different – Bruno Hérault offers a fairly detailed comparative survey. Most countries undertake some form of futures studies (institutional, geographic, scientific, environmental or social); the topics studied vary depending on circumstances, but the same topics tend to crop up regularly on the agendas of specialist organizations and think-tanks.