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Abstract

This paper analyses the potential of Strategic foresight (SF) in tackling non-linear and long-term policy problems, using grand challenges as the unit of analysis. While the strengths of SF are well understood, so far the theorisation of its governance capabilities has been limited by an empirical focus on piecemeal applications that are disjointed from governance systems. This paper addresses this gap through a framework that considers adaptive, anticipatory and future-regarding capacities. When addressing grand challenges, these three capacities are significant because they help navigate complex and non-linear policymaking, handle uncertainty and consider long-term goals. Drawing on interviews with key informants, this paper analyses how these are activated in the case of Wales (UK), a devolved government that is globally recognised for its innovative and future-oriented 2015 Well-being of Future Generations Act. In so doing, this paper identifies theoretical mechanisms generalisable to other policy areas and transferable lessons from a critical case explaining how SF enhances adaptive, anticipatory and future-regarding capacities.

Points for practitioners:

Strategic foresight can enhance adaptive, anticipatory and future-regarding policy capacities.

Strategic foresight encourages the consideration of the interconnections between policy capacities which further improve management of challenging problems.

Strategic foresight's potential is unlocked through better integration with existing governance arrangements.

Applications should ensure transparency and open scrutiny.

Keywords

strategic foresight policy capacity future-regarding policymaking grand challenges Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015

Introduction

Strategic foresight (SF) encompasses future-oriented practices and methods that enable consideration of long-term developments and possible scenarios in policymaking (Fobé and Brans, 2013; Georghiou et al., 2008; Miles et al., 2016). Studies have shown that SF is particularly promising as a core policy support function for complex and challenging policy problems (Cook et al., 2014; Keenan et al., 2012; Leigh, 2003; Poli, 2017; Umbach, 2024; Van der Steen and Van Twist, 2013).

However, a focus on piecemeal and one-off applications (e.g. Bezold, 2010) and SF's frequent disconnect from existing governance systems (e.g. De Vito and Radaelli, 2023; De Vito and Taffoni, 2023; Vervoort and Gupta, 2018) mean that its potential to enhance policy capacities remains underexplored (Muiderman et al., 2022; Rosa et al., 2021). This is problematic, as policy capacity is a central concept for explaining government effectiveness (Bakvis, 2000; Howlett, 2015; Howlett and Lindquist, 2004; Howlett et al., 2015; Wu et al., 2015). In the context of policy problems that increasingly challenge linear views of policy formulation processes and knowledge use (e.g. Cairney et al. 2019; Fobé and Brans, 2013; Radaelli, 1995), uncovering the mechanisms through which SF governance capabilities are activated is therefore paramount (Ansell and Torfing, 2022; Levi-Faur, 2012; Schneider, 2012).

To address this knowledge gap, this paper adopts policy capacity as a central concept and tackles the following research question: from the perspective of the actors involved, how and through which mechanisms does SF enhance policy capacities to manage challenging policy problems?

In answering this research question, the paper explores SF's governance using grand challenges (GCs) as the unit of analysis. GCs, such as climate change, health inequalities and food systems resilience, inherently require non-linear policy formulations owing to their cross-cutting and mission-driven nature, and are underpinned by deep uncertainty and long time horizons (Ackermann, 2024; Esposito and Terlizzi, 2026; Ferraro et al. 2015). They are characterised by complexity, as they encompass multiple domains, scales, emergent interactions and feedback loops, and uncertainty, as it is not possible to predict how they will unfold or how they will be affected by interventions or unexpected events (Ferraro et al. 2015; Voß et al., 2013). Additionally, they can present temporal gaps between drivers and impacts that require consideration of inter-generational interests and needs (Ika et al. 2024; Hale, 2024). These features position GCs as the ideal policy setting for observing and testing the relationship between SF and capacities under deep uncertainty and interdependence, but the theoretical claims and mechanisms are generalisable to other policy domains that share similar conditions.

Regarding the empirical case, Wales, a devolved government in the UK, is used as a single critical (most-likely) case study with data based on 16 qualitative interviews with key informants. Wales is globally recognised for its pioneering approach to long-term thinking following the introduction in 2015 of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act. This creates a unique opportunity to analyse the use and contribution of SF in a public policy setting characterised by a governance architecture that explicitly addresses cross-cutting, long-term issues. As such, it represents an exemplar and yet understudied case for conducting an in-depth analysis and exploration of the phenomenon under investigation.

The contributions of this paper have both scientific and practical implications. Through a focus on SF's governance capabilities, the findings identify a direct relation between SF and adaptive, anticipatory and future-regarding capacities. Moreover, they show that SF's contribution has the potential to go beyond knowledge production to also involve the mobilisation of institutions and of actors involved. The findings highlight that effectively embedding SF within existing governance arrangements is mediated by scope conditions shaping actor and institutional orchestrations.

The paper proceeds as follows. The section ‘Theoretical perspective’ sets out the theoretical framework centred on the literature on policy capacities for complex and non-linear problems. The section ‘Research design’ presents the research design, including a description of the case study and the methods for data gathering and analysis. The sections ‘Findings’ and ‘Discussion’ present and discuss the empirical findings respectively, and the section ‘Conclusions’ concludes the paper.

Theoretical perspective

There is a mature literature on policy capacity, with definitions emphasising different dimensions, such as the strategic use of knowledge (e.g. Parsons, 2004) or the ability to mobilise and allocate resources to address collective goals (e.g. Painter and Pierre, 2005). Other prominent conceptual classifications distinguished between analytical, operational and political capacities (e.g. Wu et al., 2015). Broadly speaking, these refer to the ability at individual, organisational and systemic level to use knowledge, to coordinate efforts to address collective challenges and to consider actors’ interests and values. However, different policy problems require different formulations of policy capacities that respond to their inherent characteristics. Specifically, GCs have three characteristics underpinning the problem structure (Hoppe, 2011). These characteristics are: complexity, uncertainty and temporal gaps (Harrison and Geyer, 2022; Janowski et al., 2018; Newig et al., 2007; Underdal, 2010).

This paper proposes an articulation of policy capacities that explicitly addresses the need to accelerate the shift beyond linear policy formulations (e.g. Peters and Pierre, 2016; Turnpenny et al., 2015). The resulting conceptual framework categorises adaptive, anticipatory and future-regarding capacities as critical policy capacities in this space. They are not intended to replace the analytical–operational–political distinction, but rather to specify how they manifest when addressing this type of policy problems. The conceptual framework is then used to investigate SF's governance capabilities.

Critical policy capacities to tackle GCs: towards a conceptual framework

Adaptive, anticipatory and future-regarding policy capacities are conceptually linked to the characteristics of GCs, as shown in Figure 1. The three capacities can co-occur, can be mutually reinforcing and can even be nested (e.g. Umbach, 2024). For example, adaptive applications can be reactive to uncertainty, and, therefore, are not necessarily based on anticipation (Hegger and Dieperink, 2014); alternatively, anticipatory practices may not necessarily be aligned with long-term goals. While there may be overlaps between their functions, keeping these capacities distinct is heuristically useful. Furthermore, while they directly refer to policy analytical capacity, they also encompass elements of organisational and political capacities.

Figure 1.

A policy capacity model for SF (source: author).

Managing complexity through adaptive capacity

The complexity of policy problems such as GCs stems from multiple and non-linear interactions within systems and across policy domains. When reflected into decision-making, these interactions involve horizontal and vertical interplays between policy sectors and different decision-making scales that are difficult to analyse and to control (Cairney et al., 2019; Morçöl, 2013; Peters and Pierre, 2016; Thiel et al., 2019; Turnpenny et al., 2015; Urwin and Jordan, 2008). The literature on adaptive governance deals with these aspects of complexity (Adger, 2003, 2006; Steelman, 2023). Adaptive capacity is defined as the ability to respond and adapt to stresses through structures and mechanisms that bring together a broad range of actors, including from multiple sectors and at different scales, to collectively identify problems and solutions through participation, collaboration and learning from feedback loops (Engle, 2011; Huitema et al., 2009; Pahl-Wostl, 2009). To manage complexity within systems, policymakers need to develop adaptive capacities to understand how institutions and actors interact to produce positive or negative feedback (Cairney et al., 2019; Liu et al., 2018).

Navigating uncertainty through anticipatory capacity

By definition, GCs are characterised by radical uncertainty about their impacts and their distributional consequences on different groups (Ika et al., 2024). Changes in circumstances owing to unexpected exogenous events and crises can also alter policy priorities and complicate decision-making processes (Ackermann, 2024). In linear policy settings, this uncertainty often encounters organisational cultures that prioritise uncertainty avoidance over the capacity to incorporate it as a key factor of decision-making (Andersen and Rasmussen, 2014; Grunwald, 2007; Lange and Garrelts, 2013). Proponents of anticipatory governance instead argue in favour of learning to navigate, rather than avoid, uncertainty to enhance governments’ preparedness (Fuerth, 2009; Poli, 2017). This requires the capacity to anticipate emerging issues through analysis of signals of change, systematic consideration of long-term risks and opportunities and exploration of multiple potential scenarios from the perspective of different stakeholders with differing preferences and values.

Bridging temporal gaps through future-regarding capacity

Grand challenges often constitute long problems with impacts that may not manifest for years or even decades after the causal process begins (Hale, 2024). As classic studies of temporality in public policy have demonstrated (e.g. Hall and Taylor, 1996; Jacobs, 2011; Pierson, 2004; Skocpol and Pierson, 2002), governments need to take into account multiple time horizons, since policy effects and political salience evolve at different rates. Policymakers responding to GCs and who are committed to long-term shared goals may need to face difficult trade-offs between short-term cost and long-term gains. The temporal distance may, however, lead them to prioritise short-term solutions (Schäpke and Rauschmayer, 2014). Bridging temporal gaps requires, therefore, consideration of both the impacts of megatrends and of policies’ long-term implications on governments’ normative commitments to widely accepted societal goals (Kuribayashi et al. 2018; MacKenzie, 2021). In other words, adopting MacKenzie's term future-regarding, this requires the capacity to ‘consciously consider the future when making decisions for themselves or others’ (2021, p. 33). Where anticipatory capacity focuses on navigating uncertainty, future-regarding capacity concerns how long-term shared goals, trade-offs and intergenerational impacts are explicitly addressed and translated into policy choices.

The next section discusses how SF can support policymakers in developing these three capacities.

Exploring the links between SF and policy capacity

Studies on SF application in government settings have framed it as a core policy support function to overcome short-termism in policymaking (e.g. Leigh, 2003; Störmer et al., 2020). Rutting et al. (2022) argued that SF can strengthen the governance of social-ecological systems and, therefore, highlighted the importance of inclusivity, pluralism and reflexivity in its applications. Many specialist SF studies have tended to focus on SF's contribution to knowledge production (analytical capacity), but there has been increasing attention to other, more systemic dimensions. For example, in their empirical analysis of the policy foresight system in Finland, Pouru-Mikkola et al. (2023) have identified how SF is used across different system levels and noted the factors that hinder its effectiveness, such as a lack of coordination and collaborative structures. In analysing the contributions of SF in the UK, Singapore and the Netherlands, Habegger (2010) identified knowledge formation and reflexive mutual social learning as the two key contributions of SF to public policymaking. Accordingly, while this literature offers insights into SF's systemic roles, there remains an opportunity to specify more directly how SF relates to distinct policy capacities.

To operationalise the study of SF governance capabilities, the paper considers actor and institution mobilisation mechanisms around SF as analytical lenses (Lascoumes and Le Gales, 2007; Ryan et al., 2012; Yang, 2022). Focussing on institutional mobilisation entails the analysis of how SF can become a platform for engaging actors in co-producing or interpreting SF evidence and for adapting institutions to address emerging needs. For example, SF can be promoted as a participatory, cross-deparmental practice to gather local knowledge or be integrated in reporting mechanisms. Focussing on actor mobilisation entails looking at how SF is perceived and used by actors as a goal-setting mechanism or to inform long-term plans. While distinct, these lenses do not follow a hierarchical or sequential order and can simultaneously and dynamically manifest within case settings (Capano et al., 2015; Linder and Peters, 1989).

Table 1 maps SF against adaptive, anticipatory and future-regarding capacities through these analytical lenses. This is used to operationalise the empirical analysis.

Table 1.

Analytical operationalisation.

	Potential observations
	Institutional mobilisation	Actor mobilisation
Adaptive capacity	SF enhances engagement of multiple actors for co-creation, analysis or interpretation of SF evidence. SF enables pathways to go beyond administrative boundaries and departmental silos.	SF promotes identification of feedback loops and feeds into systems thinking and learning. SF is used to analyse GCs from different perspectives.
Anticipatory capacity	SF directly feeds into policymaking. SF is integrated as a criterion to assess and evaluate policies.	SF is valued and used to explore the impacts of megatrends in the context of GCs. SF is explicitly valued as a skill, e.g. within competency frameworks.
Future-regarding capacity	SF is integrated as a criterion to monitor progress towards strategic or societal goals.	SF is used to inform strategies and plans. SF is linked to long-term goals and supports transparent articulation of their implications for decision-making and vice versa.

GC, Grand challenge; SF, Strategic foresight.

Source: author.

Research design

This paper explores the case of Wales, one of the devolved nations in the UK, and the governance architecture established following the adoption of the 2015 Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act (henceforth, WFGA) (e.g. Messham and Sheard, 2020). A single case study research design (Yin, 2014) enables an in-depth exploratory analysis of the mechanisms described above. Specifically, the WFGA brings together policy goals that are linked to GCs (e.g. climate resilience) and a governance context specifically designed to address these. Therefore, while Wales is not a statistically representative case, thanks to its characteristics and favorable governance conditions, it constitutes a critical (most-likely), yet understudied, case to test and refine the theoretical approach.

Case study

The WFGA was the first piece of legislation in the world to introduce a legal duty to protect the interests of future generations (Davies, 2017). In particular, it places a legal commitment on 56 public bodies to deliver on seven national well-being goals and to adopt five ways of working sustainably, including long-term.¹ The WFGA stands out for its explicit recognition of the role that long-term thinking can play in enhancing public sector's work, especially in the context of cross-cutting and mission-driven policy challenges (as articulated in the well-being goals). The WFGA governance architecture establishes new tools, functions and institutions designed to enable more effective policy responses to complex, uncertain and long-term challenges, in light of shared societal goals. These include SF products (e.g. the Future Trends Report), statutory multi-agency boards operating across multiple levels of governance to coordinate place-based delivery of the goals (e.g. Public Services Boards, PSBs) and institutions that embed long-term thinking in policymaking (e.g. the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales).

Data collection and analysis

Data collection involved 16 semi-structured interviews conducted between October 2022 and May 2023 with key informants from the Welsh Government, public sector organisations and third sector organisations. All participants had direct experiences with SF. Additionally, to support contextualisation and theoretical generalisation, six interviews with national and international SF expert practitioners are also included (Table 2). The protocol covered uses of policy-oriented SF in the context of the WFGA, its strengths and limitations and the links between SF and strategic policy goals.

Table 2.

Overview of participants.

Participant ID	Background/organisation
Participants 1, 2, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21 and 22	Government (Wales)
Participants 3, 4 and 16	SF expert/consultant (UK)
Participant 5	SF expert/academia (UK)
Participants 6 and 13	International organisation
Participants 7, 11 and 12	Public sector organisation (Wales)
Participant 19	Third sector organisation (Wales)

SF, Strategic foresight.

Source: author.

Thematic analysis of the data was primarily code-driven based on the analytical approach presented in Table 1 (Braun and Clarke, 2022). The analysis was revised iteratively to reflect insights that emerged from the empirical data through the theoretical lens (Wiltshire and Ronkainen, 2021).

Findings

The analysis of empirical findings illuminates SF's role in developing adaptive, anticipatory and future-regarding capacities in the Welsh governance context. Table 3 provides a summary overview of the empirical findings.

Table 3.

Overview of the empirical findings showing how SF supports policy capacities in Wales.

	Mechanism involved
	Institutional mobilisation	Actor mobilisation	Constraints/limitations
Adaptive capacity	Potential for SF to strengthen cross-departmental work under the WFGA. Creation of platforms and policy networks for joint work (Hwb Dyfodol/Futures Hub).	SF is framed as a collaborative practice that improves cross-departmental and reflexive policymaking. SF promotes systems thinking.	SF contribution depends on actor openness to systems thinking, collaboration and reflexive practices. Silos and capacity issues.
Anticipatory capacity	Future Trends report published every 5 years supports long-term thinking. National Well-being Indicators identify signals and informs drivers and trends. Integrated Impact Assessment supports embedment of SF across the policy cycle.	SF is considered as a skill to be embedded in public sector organisations. Scenarios and ‘what-if’ options strengthen strategic preparedness. Training programmes support SF skill development and culture change.	Silos and capacity issues. Linear thinking and silos remain the default. SF may be de-prioritised or dismissed as ‘soft’ evidence.
Future-regarding capacity	The WFGA establishes a duty to consider long term and deliver the well-being goals. The ‘Wales Futures’ Pyramid outlines analytical-policy steps. Future Generations Commissioner for Wales and Auditor General for Wales promote accountability and transparency.	SF can support stress-tests of policy goals and strategy and creates space to examine purpose and assumptions (learning and innovation). SF can support alignment of policies with the well-being goals, enabling integrated conversations about assumptions and long-term implications.	Risks from lack of diverse perspectives. Mindset shift required.

SF, Strategic foresight; WFGA, 2015 Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act.

Source: author.

SF and adaptive capacity

Participants agreed that effectively tackling complex, uncertain and long-term challenges requires moving beyond departmental silos, and that SF can be a lever to achieve this: ‘New and emerging issues do not fit neatly into those silos, so you need new approaches to deal with things at the intersections … and foresight is a mechanism by which you can bring together people across those silos to talk about those systems’.² In this regard, SF is perceived as an effective practice: ‘You’ve rehearsed the ways that your strategy may need to evolve as context change’.³ Furthermore, SF's contribution was clearest as an approach that enhances systems thinking for the delivery of the well-being duties: ‘in ideal circumstances it's a routine practice where you discuss how the different parts of your system fit together, what its potential vulnerabilities are and how you need to coordinate … We want to inject a greater degree of reflection and broader bigger picture reflection’.⁴ This is reinforced by the creation of new knowledge exchange platforms (e.g. Hwb Dyfdol/Futures Hub) or by introducing integrated ways of working within existing structures, such as the PSBs, which are multidisciplinary and place-based by design.

The legal recognition of long-term thinking, alongside integrated and collaborative ways of working, provided by the WFGA supports this (‘gives permission’⁵). Indeed, within the WFGA, SF broadens policy horizons through consideration of megatrends that fall outside individual departmental remits, drawing people together.⁶ Participants described SF as a key analytical and operational skill for delivering the well-being objectives. In their experience, SF-based collaborative platforms tend to be more ‘outcome’ or ‘goal-oriented’,⁷ challenging linear problem framing.

Nevertheless, participants pointed to persisting silos that hinder SF's support for systems thinking and, in turn, for adaptive capacity: ‘My reflection is that for a lot of policy teams this is not a natural way of thinking that they are used to, and that they need support to help to think [about the future]’.⁸ Furthermore, sustained senior leadership backing was perceived as critical⁹ to challenge linear thinking. Resource constraints were cited as a longstanding barrier that limits the extent and durability of SF's contribution in this regard.¹⁰

SF and anticipatory capacity

Strategic foresight can accelerate the adoption of anticipatory practices in the Welsh policy system. Participants described SF as an input for ‘decision-making under radical uncertainty’ that benefits from diverse perspectives: ‘there are some things you don't know and [SF] gives you different options: you can either just ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist, or […] you can try to understand the uncertainty to an acceptable level … methods like scenario planning ask the what-if question, and for us, why we do that is to ensure better delivery of sustainable development’.¹¹ This empowers policymakers in navigating uncertainty, or at the very least, in co-producing a strong rationale for policy choices that increases confidence and transparency under difficult circumstances, rather than providing ‘fixes’ or ‘solutions’ in a mechanistic way.

More specifically, participants identified a strong potential for SF to contribute to national risk and preparedness strategies through scenarios and consideration of ‘what-if’ options, which otherwise tend to prioritise narrow and reactive responses. They noted that SF can improve the analytical rationale and strategic intent behind preparedness interventions, including with respect to GC-related risks (e.g. climate change, flooding¹²), thus strengthening the rationale of risk mitigation decisions.¹³ In the Welsh context, participants saw opportunities related to the Preparedness and Risk Group, which convenes senior leaders with risk portfolios and could contribute to institutionalising this approach.

The WFGA leverages SF-based actor and institution mobilisation mechanisms to support anticipatory capacity. First and foremost, the Future Trends Report, published every five years by the Welsh Government and approved by the Senedd, is a principal SF tool for integrating long-term thinking; it is designed to be used and interpreted across all levels of governance.¹⁴ To facilitate legitimation and uptake, each trend is linked to publicly available datasets. In addition, the Office of Future Generations Commissioner for Wales supports SF and long-term thinking through training programmes and knowledge sharing, and self-evaluation tools (such as the Maturity Matrix), and through direct engagement with organisations and Public Services Boards. Within the Welsh Government, training programmes and Policy Champions help to embed SF as a policy practice.¹⁵ Finally, the WFGA introduces a legal duty on the Auditor General for Wales to examine and report on the extent to which public bodies integrate and apply long-term thinking. Long-term considerations must also feature in Integrated Impact Assessments, thus integrating SF as part of the toolbox for policy evaluation and appraisal.

However, some expressed scepticism about SF's added value relative to other common techniques used to generate future-oriented evidence for policymaking, such as forecasting or modelling, which aim to control, rather than navigate, uncertainty.¹⁶ This raises the risk that SF evidence may not be perceived as sufficiently robust or useful and, therefore, may be de-prioritised. Overall, participants agreed that realising SF's full potential requires a fundamental mindset shift, but resource scarcity and time constraints are major barriers.

SF and future-regarding capacity

Strategic foresight helps policymakers explicitly and transparently consider the long-term implications and impacts of decisions for the delivery of the well-being goals. In Wales, this perspective is exemplified by a Welsh Government logic chain model, based on SF techniques, called the Wales Futures’ Pyramid.¹⁷ The model illustrates the analysis-to-policy steps that need to be followed to operationalise the WFGA, going beyond navigating uncertainty to informing decisions. At the base of the Pyramid, signals of change are monitored through national indicators and milestones; these feed into the Future Trends Report for the development of scenarios for policy development.

In parallel, the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales advises on how current decisions may affect future generations, on the delivery of the well-being goals and on how to integrate long-term thinking in a more normative sense. As one participant observed: ‘Any long-term goal that we’re setting out has the risk that we’re not thinking about how many other things will change around it. So, if you’re setting a long-term goal, there is not one context under which we know that it will have to be delivered. There's a wide range of possible futures and it is due diligence to make sure that you’re able to implement and stress-test [goals] against possible different futures’.¹⁸

Strategic foresight creates space for reflection, enabling open discussion of purpose and assumptions: ‘we need to be asking: are these the right things to do to achieve those outcomes? Especially if those assumptions and previous evidence suggests that this won't make a difference’.¹⁹ As one participant put it ‘foresight can be a sort of institutional therapy’ that nurtures a culture of learning, reflection and innovation by enabling interrogation of assumptions and delivery plans across multiple possible futures.²⁰

However, some limitations were also highlighted by participants: in particular, insufficient consideration of multi-disciplinary and diverse perspectives around possible or desirable futures and long-term policy implications on people and communities risks creating biased or partial conclusions that undermine SF legitimation as a deliberative tool.²¹ Furthermore, others were less optimistic about the current extent of SF institutionalisation and impact on policy choices, citing a persistent prioritisation of short-term responses over long-term planning as well as uneven uptake across policy areas.²²

Overall, findings show that participants see SF as an opportunity to articulate more clearly and transparently what the delivery of the WFGA entails in real policymaking terms, and highlight the synergies created by SF's contributions in terms of adaptive, anticipatory and future-regarding capacities, and the supportive legislative framework. Nonetheless, cross-cutting limitations qualify or limit SF's role.

Discussion

The integration of theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence from the case of Wales generates insights that are both scientifically and practically useful (Lumineau et al., 2025). Building on policy capacity frameworks that emphasise analytical, operational and political dimensions, the paper identifies the articulations of policy capacities required to respond to non-linear and long-term problems, with specific analytical focus on GCs. In so doing it explicitly incorporates temporal dimensions in a capacity framework. Moreover, it provides the foundations for theorising SF's role in unlocking policy capacities across policy domains and empirical contexts.

The empirical findings refine and extend the literature-based conceptual framework by specifying the mechanisms linking SF to the three capacities (adaptive, anticipatory and future-regarding), highlighting synergies and gaps. The operationalisation based on institutional and actor mobilisation mechanisms enabled understanding of how capacities are activated and what conditions shape their effectiveness. Table 4 synthesises the interpretation of the empirical findings. The ‘SF contribution’ statement indicates a qualitative intensity assessment (salience and corroboration), not statistical significance.

Table 4.

SF contributions to capacity development.

	Main findings	SF contribution	Conditions
Adaptive capacity	SF opens pathways for cross-departmental, multilevel, multi-stakeholder work, thus strengthening the WFGA participatory governance architecture and systems thinking.	Moderate and indirect	Commitment and openness to collaborative and reflexive cross-departmental practices; sustained leadership backing; adequate resourcing.
Anticipatory capacity	SF helps navigate radical uncertainty, changing the ways in which policies are designed and evaluated and promoting a culture of anticipation.	High and direct	Legitimation of SF; adequate resourcing.
Future-regarding capacity	SF creates space to analyse options to tackle GCs and their implications for long-term delivery of the WFGA and shared goals.	High and direct	Inclusion of diverse perspectives; accountability in relation to long-term commitments; adequate resourcing.

GC, Grand challenge; SF, strategic foresight; WFGA, 2015 Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act.

Source: author.

While links to anticipatory and future-regarding capacities were stronger and more direct, SF's contribution to adaptive capacity building is more subtle: it translates into enhanced systems thinking and reflexive policymaking practice. First, the links between SF and adaptive capacities are two-fold: SF supports upstream cross-departmental and systems thinking practices and contributes to knowledge exchange and learning by bringing long-term perspectives and interconnectedness closer to people's experiences (Andersen and Rasmussen, 2014; Kardos, 2012; Martini et al., 2020; Miles, 2008; Parkhurst and Abeysinghe, 2016). There are many participatory approaches that contribute to adaptive capacities, including those coming from systems thinking. Acknowledging this, SF's distinctiveness lies in broadening policy horizons to include long-term trends and perspectives. Second, SF contributes to anticipatory capacity by changing how policies are assessed or stress-tested and how capabilities are defined and developed. Teams like the Preparedness and Risk group offer potential examples for institutionalising SF into risk and resilience planning. Strengthening anticipatory governance to plan and adapt for change is considered a primary aim of SF in governments (Fuerth, 2009; Umbach, 2024; Wayland, 2015) Third, from a normative perspective, SF contributes to future-regarding capacity development as it opens new spaces to co-create strategies and discuss synergies and trade-offs that may result from political choices in relation to GCs (Kuribayashi et al., 2018; Marciano et al., 2024; Mazzucato, 2018). In this regard, SF nurtures learning and reflection through interrogating assumptions across multiple possible futures.

There are also conditions underpinning the relationship between SF and policy capacity development. As a start, SF's contribution is mediated by actor openness to cross-departmental, collaborative and reflexive approaches and by ongoing leadership backing. Strategic foresight is also hindered by a degree of scepticism concerning its added value and legitimacy as a source of anticipatory evidence; it, therefore, faces a risk of de-prioritisation in policymaking that favours other methods in the hierarchy of evidence (Head, 2010; Radaelli and Taffoni, 2022). Furthermore, SF's deliberative reach depends on the extent to which diverse perspectives are included and long-term commitments are legitimised by clear accountability mechanisms (e.g. Nikolova, 2014; Terry et al., 2024). Finally, SF governance capabilities across all capacities are limited by persistent silos, linear thinking and resource constraints.

There are practical implications as well. First, it is crucial to understand how SF is embedded within governance settings to assess whether adaptive, anticipatory and future-regarding capacities are deployed appropriately and across which dimensions. Second, the three capacities are interdependent: anticipatory capacity without adaptiveness may be ineffective or lead to policy recommendations based on partial information, while future-regarding considerations may be inconsequential if they do not account for emerging signals and unintended consequences. Third, SF's influence on decision-making should remain open to scrutiny, contestation and deliberation in line with other key governance issues, such as open evidence use (Esposito and Terlizzi, 2026). Strategic foresight is necessary for tackling challenging policy problems, but it should not be treated deterministically as a one-size-fits-all or a deus ex machina (Radaelli, 2023).

This study has some limitations. Reliance on a single case study limits the empirical generalisability of findings, especially considering the unique governance landscape that characterises the Welsh case (Davies, 2017; Stevenson and Richardson, 2003). In addition, the analysis does not evaluate downstream policy outcomes of SF integration, which would require a policy-focussed study; such outcomes will also be influenced by other implementation dynamics linked to the WFGA (Nesom and MacKillop, 2020).

These limitations notwithstanding, the identification of scope conditions allows for theoretical generalisation beyond this case. Strategic foresight's role goes beyond knowledge production (analytical capacity) to include also mobilising institutions and actors towards shared long-term goals (operational and political capacities). However, SF capabilities are themselves enabled or constrained by existing governance structures. Specifically, SF is more likely to be effective when actors are committed and open to cross-boundary and reflexive practice, when institutional barriers and silos are recognised and challenged, where SF is institutionalised with clear accountability and legitimacy. In the absence of these scope conditions, SF may fail to produce durable and systemic shifts in adaptive, anticipatory and future-regarding capacities.

Conclusions

This paper identifies theoretically generalisable mechanisms that demonstrate how SF can enhance adaptive, anticipatory and future-regarding capacities, while also clarifying the conditions for its effectiveness. The analytical focus on GCs as unit of analysis provided an ideal test bed to examine complexity, uncertainty and temporal gaps in contexts requiring enhanced coordination across organisations and policy domains to achieve shared goals. Empirically, Wales represents a critical (most-likely) case for observing these mechanisms, given the governance architecture underpinning the WFGA, which creates favourable conditions for SF institutionalisation and embedment. The finding that SF contributions remain somewhat constrained even here suggests that these barriers are likely to be more pronounced in less favourable contexts. While the empirical evidence is drawn from this case and unit of analysis, the theoretical claims concern the underlying mechanisms, which generalise to other policy domains that present similar challenges (complexity, deep uncertainty, long time frames), such as industrial decarbonisation, critical infrastructure resilience, housing or transport infrastructure planning.

There are several implications for the epistemic community, and in particular for public policy and public administration scholars. First, capacity frameworks should incorporate temporal dimensions more explicitly. Second, building on this contribution, comparative research should test whether these mechanisms and the cross-cutting scope conditions operate similarly across GCs and other policy domains, and test the extent to which the capacities are context dependent. Third, longitudinal research should examine whether SF contributions are sustained over time and what can cause disruption, as well as analysing real-world policy impacts. Fourth, scholars should explore the epistemological status of SF evidence in diverse policy settings, given that this study demonstrated that its characterisation as ‘soft’ or less robust evidence affects its governance capabilities.

To conclude, this paper establishes the foundation for global comparative research to assess whether the identified mechanisms operate similarly across specific GCs, different policy domains and governance contexts, and for identifying the institutional and epistemic conditions under which SF's potential can be more fully realised.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Laura De Vito

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, (grant number ES/W008939/1).

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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How does strategic foresight enhance policy capacities in the governance of grand challenges?

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Theoretical perspective

Critical policy capacities to tackle GCs: towards a conceptual framework

Managing complexity through adaptive capacity

Navigating uncertainty through anticipatory capacity

Bridging temporal gaps through future-regarding capacity

Exploring the links between SF and policy capacity

Research design

Case study

Data collection and analysis

Findings

SF and adaptive capacity

SF and anticipatory capacity

SF and future-regarding capacity

Discussion

Conclusions

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Funding

Declaration of conflicting interests

Notes

References