The Future as Epistemic Condition: How International Organisations Anticipate Futures of Social Policy

Abstract

ABSTRACT The welfare state is increasingly challenged and threatened by futures, whose exact realisation remains largely uncertain. The article compares how the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the World Bank anticipate and authorise “futures of work” in light of technological transformations and climate change. The article shows that IOs face epistemic constraints both in constructing problems and in designing social security policy proposals. Constraints rely on visions of possible and probable futures over which the IOs do not always have control. Anticipatory practices that enact future visions oscillate between concretely specifying future developments and narrative flexibility, which does not directly specify courses of action but impacts core logics behind policy proposals. Irrespective of IOs’ ideological differences, solutions to technological transformations focus on precaution, whereas solutions to climate change focus on preparation. While precaution allows for imagining possibilities, preparation stresses the urgency of issues.