The Potentials and Pitfalls of Predicting Politics

On August 26-27, 2016 the Center for Security Studies hosted a workshop on “The Potentials and Pitfalls of Predicting Politics” that brought together a small number of scholars from Political Science/ International Relations, International History, as well as Technology Studies and Life Sciences for a two-day interdisciplinary event.

Starting from the assumption that both social and life sciences are increasingly expected to contribute to policy making by providing policy-advice in the form of scenarios and forecasts of future developments, participants discussed the possibilities and limits, but also the political implications of such efforts: How do different epistemological traditions conceptualize (future) knowledge? What types of future knowledge can academia provide? What are the methods to draw upon? Which assumptions drive future thinking? What is the political purpose of future thinking? How do power dynamics and knowledge hierarchies come into play?