A quiet revolution: opportunities for local futures in the UK

Central Government in the UK has opened the door to futures work at a local level through the modernisation programme for local government. It has created conditions for local governance which are strategic and futures-orientated. This raises challenges and opportunities for developing expert and participative futures research to inform local thinking, decision making and action. It also opens the institutions, structures and processes at a local level to the inherently uncomfortable and destabilising thoughts of what the future may hold within an interconnected and turbulent world. This work appears to be a quiet revolution in the making, creating major opportunities for foresight, futures research and anticipatory management at a local level and for developing processes that focus civic attention on a regular basis on longterm challenges and implications for personal, corporate and political action. Context: towards a new constitutional settlement I n 1996, Geoff Mulgan and Perri 6 wrote, `̀ at the moment fear and uncertainty are leading to some strange reactions. We have few institutiona l frameworks for serious thinking about what the future is bringing.’’ This article tracks the emergence of institutiona l frameworks for local futures and takes as a starting point the arrival of New Labour in government in the UK in 1997. It seeks to explore the role of futures research, foresight and anticipatory management at the local level of government and governance in the UK. With its manifesto in 1997, New Labour not only renamed itself but also set out measures to create a `̀ new’’ Britain, in their words a nation fit for the twenty-first century. Tracing the development of this work back to preand post-1997 government thinking and planning ± the Third Way ± work on civil society and social capital and on the impact of global drivers (and of dealing with the opportunities and risks of `̀ the new world disorder’’ (Healey, 1996)) can be seen to have influenced a government reassessing the role and purpose of government itself. Many of these trends may have affected whichever party formed government, but New Labour appear to have grappled with the notions of multi-tier governance ± of `̀ decision division’’ (Toffler, 1970) ± within a `̀ network society’’ (Castells, 1997) and of the place of individuals within a turbulent and uncertain world. Tony Blair (1996) set out the importance of: . . . political reform and modernisation, to make our government fit for the twenty-first century. If we want to create an active civil society, the system of government has to be one that shares power and responsibility with the people . . . Institutiona l reform will not revive faith in politics in and of itself, but it will help. To be fair, disillusion with politics is not just a British phenomenon, but a more generalized one. People have learnt not to trust their leaders: they have come to think politicians are in it for what they can get out of it . . . It is crucial for the Labour Party to build trust and then retain it. That is why it is The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/1463-6689.htm` fo r es igh t 4 ,2 2002 , pp . 10 -20 , # MCB UP L im ited , 146 3-66 89 , 10 .110 8 /1 463668