EJFR European Journal of Futures Research (Springer Nature, open access)
Deadline: 31 January 2026
Public policy decisions need to be taken under considerable future uncertainty. This uncertainty refers to the open future development of natural conditions, such as future climate change and ecosystems, as well as future changes in economic, political, social, cultural and technological contexts. At the same time, complex challenges - such as sustainability transitions - require considering policies not in an isolated way, because individual policies can foster but more often hinder each other. Often in decision making, the real question does not lie in making choices between different policies but finding the best combination of policies. To this aim, synergistic policy mixes within and across sectors and levels that avoid contradictions need to be developed and implemented. To support anticipation and robust and adaptive policy design, policy-mix scenarios can be useful. These go beyond classical approaches either a) integrating individual policies rather implicitly as parts of drivers of scenarios or b) explicitly testing (individual or lists of) alternative policies against business-as-usual scenarios. However, up to date, interactions between policies usually have not been systematically considered in scenarios analysis. Policy-mix scenarios consider interactions between individual policies as well as the performance, coherence and robustness of alternative policy-mixes under alternative scenarios. One new approach to develop and analyze policy-mix scenarios is to apply CIB, cross-impact balance analysis (Weimer-Jehle 2006).
This article collection invites contributions that have developed, tested and applied policy-mix scenarios for policy design under uncertainty. We welcome work in any policy field, where policy interactions and future uncertainty are relevant, such as - but not limited to – land use, water, mobility, and climate.
- We particularly welcome contributions that:
- Use semi-quantitative cross-impact methods, as CIB, to develop policy-mix scenarios;
- Consider policy-interactions across sectors and levels;
- Further develop criteria to assess policy-mix scenarios (as coherence or robustness);
- Experiment with serious gaming and participatory modeling with policy-mix scenarios, including stakeholders and policy-makers;
- Explore the use of digital tools and analytic and generative AI to develop, analyze and communicate policy-mix scenarios.
Guest Editors: Dr. Hannah Kosow; Dr. Sara Marie Tori; Prof. Dr. Geert te Boveldt; Dr. Wolfgang Hauser
Link to call and submission: https://link.springer.com/collections/ghhgdhgefd