Tag Archives: foresight scenario

2013 – 2018 EVT – A Current Account Surplus? Think again! (Mamominarch)

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Last weeks’ summary: In 2012 EVT, Everstate (the ideal-type corresponding to our very real countries created to foresee the future of governance and of the modern nation-state) knows a rising dissatisfaction of its population. To face the various difficulties and widespread discontent, in a first scenario, Everstate’s governing bodies have transformed the conclusions of the Mamominarch Commission into policies. They have thus started implementing the programme of drastic reduction of public expenses through privatization and outsourcing, transfer of responsibilities to local administrations and increased reliance on The Regional Union, accompanied by a temporary increase in income and consumption taxes. The first months of reforms have been successful and the situation appears to improve.

(The reader can click on each picture to see a larger version in a new tab – a navigating map of posts is available to ease reading – research note at the bottom of the post).

trade exports s3

Everstate’s capacity to reimburse its debt should also come from a positive current account, fed, in part, by a positive trade balance, aggregating results in trade of services and trade of goods.

Trade balance (1)

Initially, the well-educated population and the disappearance of many positions of civil servants leads to an abundance of expert personnel. Through Novstate and its friends companies, benefiting from the positive perception the reforms undertaken in Everstate generate, the export of services skyrockets.

However, with time, it is becoming increasingly difficult to send children to school. The provinces have now to manage the education system alone or with the private sector, and the latter sees no immediate interest in funding primary or high schools.  Private schooling becomes the norm, and  weights heavily on the budget of the less well-off.

If the best-known universities find some funding with the new inflow of capital, this is restricted to specific branches, namely finance, economics, some areas of politics, war strategy and tactics thanks to Novstate, IT and some technologies of direct interest to the companies having invested in Everstate. As a result, research greatly suffers. To compensate the absence of public funding, universities triple their fees and only the most fortunate families can now send their children to universities. Scholarships almost disappear. The banks are not interested anymore in lending to students as the benefits are too small and as students, most often, have no guarantor. Local administrations send reports on this dreadful evolution to Everstate’s national representatives and to the central government, but the latter can only try to compensate through its yearly orientation paper, which has close to no effect as it is not assorted of any possibility of action. Hence, the number of well-educated and internationally competitive Everstatans rapidly dwindles.  Furthermore, those who could receive graduate and post-graduate education are trained exclusively in those approaches at one with the Mamominarch system. Hence, as time goes by, if ever the Mamominarch system is not proving to be the ideal solution expected, will they still be considered as adequate?

After the first months of euphoria and hope following the implementation of the Mamominarch policies, the educated youth finds itself in the same conundrum as previously, but with even less prospects. If new qualified jobs are created by the foreign and domestic companies investing in Everstate and by the new outsourcing contracts, those are given in priority to ex civil servants and to foreigners. As a result, already by the second half of 2013 EVT, except in the IT sector focused on online shopping and electronic payments, most young graduates and post graduates find themselves still unemployed or under-employed, taking whatever jobs they find in tourism or industry. At the beginning of the period, those with the best academic records, and who can afford it, try to migrate, but, considering the still uncertain global situation, few succeed. By 2018 EVT, the relative position of the Everstatan educative system is such that, added to the failure of their elders to escape, hardly any smart young Everstatan still tries migrating.

Overall, the export of services cannot grow anymore.

As far as the export (and import) of goods is concerned, those depends not only on human skills and workforce but also on available resources. Now, as seen, with the exception of the tourism industry, Everstate has to face domestic shortage or sharp increase in prices  (stemming among other causes of a relative decline in supply) for the resources it used to transform and to include in the goods it exports.

Furthermore, many of those resources – classical and new – needed by Everstatan producers  are not located on Everstatan territory. For example, for many high-tech companies, rare earth elements are a crucial industrial component.* However, those rare earth deposits are not present everywhere and in the same quantity, China being, currently, the lead producer.

This new condition regarding resources, as explained previously, should imply increasing tasks in governing, which, themselves, demand new resources and income for the ruler and its staff (including the need for new staff).   This, in turn, would mean further and new state spending, at least until the system is stabilised. However, as supplementary state expenditures are ruled out by the Mamominarch system, then the search for new resources and income cannot even be thought and thus novel strategies of extraction of resources can even less be identified. Thus, the increasing tasks of governing can be neither planned nor carried out. Worse still, the dismantling of so many services of the state makes it impossible to monitor, record and analyse what is happening.

As, worldwide, so many industries are competing for the same resources, national policies and negotiations are more than helpful, they are necessary. However, in Everstate, businesses cannot anymore benefit from such support and each company with supply problems must fend for itself. Each is now alone to find solutions, or it must turn to the Regional Union or to International institutions or try to find other private allies, which, in a world of hardened competition, may be hazardous. Meanwhile, other companies from other countries do benefit from their government’s support. Everstatans businesses thus find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. Indeed, relatively quickly, the young Everstatan industries dealing with those materials involving rare earth elements, for example, lose to competition. Either they go bankrupt or, when their technology is interesting, they are bought by foreign companies, which then re-localise according to their own priorities. By 2018 EVT, no Everstatan industry involving rare earth elements remain.

The situation regarding energy is similar, however with even worse consequences… to be continued.

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* Among others, for interesting estimates on the whole rare earth element market, see the analyses made by the South African company frontier Rare Earth, as well as their sources. For an example of use,  see articles on the electric car and corresponding batteries (although the importance and scarcity of Lithium for Lithium-ion batteries is disputed) e.g. David Biello, “New Energy-Dense Battery Could Enable Long-Distance Electric Cars: Material changes enable a new battery to store more electricity–and could boost the driving range of electric vehicles,” Scientific American, February 27, 2012; Shane McGlaun, “Science Researchers Create Fluoride Battery, Look to Replace Lithium-ion Technology,” Daily Tech (Blog), October 24, 2011.

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Further research

As underlined in the previous post, ideally, with more resources, notably a team of researchers and adequate computing facilities, the values attributed to variables should be quantified, when the variables are about quantities.  Notably, it would be very interesting, assuming we were able to enter specific times for each link, to test the variation of those time periods according to changes in quantities, and vice versa. It is indeed possible – or even likely – that thresholds and tipping points may occur according to such variations. More broadly, such hypotheses could also be tested on qualitative variables, methodology to be defined.

The Chronicles of Everstate: the Actors

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(Updated 6 June 2012 – this list will be updated when new actors appear in the scenarios)

The Everstatans: the citizens, the people, the Nation

Everstate’s central governing bodies or political authorities: the government, Parliament, the national representatives, the civil servants constituting the formal and rational modern bureaucracy.

Everstate’s regional and local governing bodies: elected representatives at town, department (or county) and region level.

Everstate’s political parties: Two major parties (loosely associated with social democrats on the one hand and conservative on the other). Other parties are insignificant in terms of national representation.

International Special fund for Sustainable Innovation and Green Energy (ISSIGE) [Scenario 2 - Panglossy]: A special fund into which the new Everstatan government decides that Everstate must participate. This fund will help polities harnessing the ecological evolution and the increasing complexity of resources, and transform those into opportunities. A specific instrument will be organised around the Regional Union and should “fund pan-Regional infrastructure projects.”

International meeting group for the resilience of the financial system (IRESFIS) [Scenario 2 - Panglossy]: Spearheaded by Everstate and its newly elected government, IRASFIS is linked to the G-20, and involves the major financial private institutions. It must bring back trust to markets and allow for a return to a proper flow of liquidity.

The International Society of States: all states actors in the world (using Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society, idea and concept).

The Regional Union: “Everstate, as many other states in the world, was also a member of a regional institution, a Regional Union of independent and sovereign democratic states, it had joined freely in the decades following World War II. The Regional Union is neither a Federation, as the United States, Canada, India or Germany, for example, nor a Confederation, but something different, in the making. Its mission, shape, organisation, membership, areas of exclusive or only shared competence and consultative responsibility are being continually reworked and redesigned through various treaties and pacts.”

The International Governmental Organisations: UN and agencies, WTO, WB, IMF etc.

The lenders’ nexus: the largest banks and financial funds and more generally any organisation lending money and operating on the financial market. Includes the shadow banking system.

Novstate: “the powerful Everstatan Company… specialised in strategy and technology consulting. Year after year, Novstate is awarded the same contracts, which end up being seen as almost proprietary, and wins new ones… Even the direct security apparatus of Everstate is not anymore fully public, as a few private companies, Everstatan and international, play there an increasingly crucial role, from multi-involvement in the army, which is challenged by its reduced size, to various security functions such as logistics or the screening done at airports.”

Novstate’s CEO: Has created Novstate at the end of the 1980s. He has become an acclaimed business expert and governance counselor.

Novstate’s network of Friends Companies: “.. Novstate does not only advise governance bodies but also supplies governance services, often in areas where there are also advisors, as it unites in its network of “friends’ companies” – a new business concept derived from social networking – small security firms, quasi armies, high-tech start-ups, biotech laboratories, etc.”

Evernet: a very performing high-tech Everstatan company.

Everstate’s universities and scientists: “…Very good quality universities… Those last 60 years they have provided increasingly recognised scientific knowledge and understanding, notably in the areas of main normative concern, such as economics, business and technology. They … also play the role of think tank.

The Modern University of Everstate (MUEVT): The largest university of Everstate. It was created at the end of the nineteenth century and fundamentally reorganised after World War II.

The Everstatan School of Liberal Politics: An influential and rich department within MUEVT that at is at the forefront of research and publications in topics related to economics, monetary and fiscal policies, electoral politics, international regimes, peace studies, etc.

Occupy Everstate Movement: It is part of the global Occupy/Indignados Movement. It was formed in early 2011 EVT.

Anonymous: a global novel political force.

Novcybio International: A foreign company that develops new biotechnologies. It headquarters are located abroad, outside the Regional Union.

Novcybio Everstate: A wealthy Everstatan entrepreneur bought farmland in the impoverished Southeast at a very low price. Offering to use it to test Novcybio’s products, he could create and develop Nocybio Everstate.

2012-2013 EVT – Implementing the Mamominarch conclusions

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Last weeks’ summary: In 2012 EVT, Everstate (the ideal-type corresponding to our very real countries created to foresee the future of governance and of the modern nation-state) knows a rising dissatisfaction of its population. To face the various difficulties and widespread discontent, Everstate’s governing authorities decide to follow the conclusions of the Mamominarch Commission that recommend to drastically reduce state expenditures.

(The reader can click on each picture to see a larger version in a new tab – a navigating map of posts is available to ease reading – methodological or research note at the bottom of the post).

The Mamominarch conclusions become policy

All governing bodies thus adopt the conclusions of the Mamominarch Commission. New laws are enacted when needed, which is easily done as the major parties seating in Parliament were part of the Commission. The constitution is even changed to incorporate the new ideals and objectives. As top-level civil servants were also either part of the Commission or represented, legislation can be executed without any major impediment. Indeed, a mix of career and organisation related incentives*, as well as normative material and ideological stakes greatly facilitate execution at all levels.

As the major elite groups, including the lenders, were also present, no elite-prompted hidden opposition exists; liquidity and the various resources mastered by the elite, including the traditional mass media, are largely made available. International and Regional support by those organisations that were included in the Commission is strongly emphasised through various diplomatic gains and prestige attention. A few more  Everstatan officials and political figures obtain high level positions in various international fora.

Papers, articles, interviews and books from the various experts, famous people, and academics having been part of the Mamominarch Commission soon reinforce mass media support. “The Mamominarch break-through: reinventing true happiness” written by Novstate’s CEO and founder becomes an international best-seller, while Hollywood starts the production of the next blockbuster on the life-story of the successful businessman.**

As the new measures are heralded as the new type of governance adapted to the reality of Everstate and allowing for a happy future, in line with the worldview and its beliefs, citizens find back meaning and hope and accept the new laws and policies, although with some worries regarding the efforts they will have to consent. A few remain skeptics but their voices are muted by the majority and by the normative deluge of support to the new system. The unions hope that renewed growth will stop unemployment.

As a result, the Occupy Everstate movement loses many of its sympathisers. Furthermore, as the Mamominarch system means less state, the part of the movement that tends to embrace anarchism is satisfied. The presence of Evernet’s CEO within the Commission quells some of the fears regarding over-regulation of the Internet and online networking. Occupy Everstate tends thus to lose even more active supporters and apparently recedes. Its most active members can do nothing else than going back home. Yet, the links between them, notably through social networking are not severed.

Remains now to engineer the reforms and notably the delicate short-term transition.

Implementing the Mamominarch policies 

state and ruler expenditures s3

The variable upon which the Mamominarch Commission plays is “ruler and state spending” (see below methodological and research note).

The drastic reduction of expenses will reduce the deficit, stop borrowing and thus stabilise the interests, notably those paid abroad as a large amount of the debt is held overseas. However, the existing debt must also be reimbursed. This should be made possible overtime and as quickly as possible, notably with a positive current account.

First, Everstate must organise a temporary increase of resources extracted to meet the existing expenses, waiting for those to disappear or be significantly reduced. It must do so without impacting either the lenders’ nexus or the elite groups. However, as the overall situation has not yet changed (see 2012 EVT: Budget Deficit and Liquidity), the only way, as recommended by the Commission, is to sensibly increase taxes on personal income and on consumption, the latter being favoured as it is said to be less felt by citizens. To underline the temporary character of the effort a special contribution is created, “the salvation tax,” which will affect all tax payers incrementally and progressively and is perceived on all incomes (rate between 8% and 12%), will be paid as soon as 2013 EVT. Meanwhile a new tax on consumption of 3% on top of the existing ones, “the anti-debt tax” is applied immediately. Those taxes will be suppressed in five years.

The drastic reduction of public expenses is planned over a five-year period. All public services related to infrastructure will be decentralised and sold to the private sector within the next six to twelve months. All heath care related activities, and the whole pensions and retirement sector will similarly be privatized over the next two years. By 2017, aiming at  reducing the central civil service by 50%, whole sections of ministries will be priced and then sold, if the mission of the unit is seen as economically viable and better externalised, or transferred to a local administration. Services will then be paid either by the state or local administration through contracts following the outsourcing method, or directly by people, according to cases. Within the central state administration, the management of outsourcing is reinforced on an interagency or interministerial basis, while exchanges with The Regional Union for analysis and direction are increased. The education and university systems are considerably privatised and localised; Everstate, working hand in hand with the Regional Union, will keep only a mission of orientation and accreditation.***

With cuts equally divided in 5 steps, one per year, the foreign and diplomatic services, defense, intelligence and police budget are further reduced. Most operations of cooperation and aid will be the responsibilities of volunteer organisations and private firms within the year. Only the bare minimum of diplomatic presence will be kept, while analysis increasingly will rely on both private contractors and The Regional Union. The army will be further reduced across all functions, with a staggering increase in the use of private contractors, mainly operated by Novstate. The new cyber-division that was about to be created is contracted to a Novstate’s friend company. Police forces become localised and use of outsourcing through private security companies must become the norm. Novstate offers a centralised access to information and communication, besides operating many local police posts.

Within a year, state expenditures are already strongly reduced, but not sufficiently. As hoped, Everstate is upheld as model for having so efficiently and swiftly solved the problems that plague so many countries. The debt has been reduced through the flow of money generated by the privatizations. Income, notably taxes, is still insufficient to pay for  expenses, but the deficit is on its way to be reduced.

The success and the favourable environment attracts foreign capital, notably new banks, insurances and financial institutions developing new products, as well as foreign companies taking over some of the state services of Everstate, when those are not provided by Novstate and its friends companies. They mainly settle in Everstate’s capital. Foreign capital is also very active in allowing for the privatization of Everstate’s state infrastructure. CEOs, who think it would be more interesting for them to produce part of their goods in the Western provinces of Everstate, start building factories and hire local people. Meanwhile, medium to high-end tourism, notably in the snowy and mountainous North and on the coastal areas, is flourishing. Interestingly, the seaside area also attracts internet companies specialised in online shopping and electronic payments.

Unemployment, by mid-2013 EVT seems to be stabilised, even if it is not reduced. However, the brutal change of system has introduced a rampant fear, yet compounded by hope, in Everstatans as they see their income reduced and have to adapt to the new healthcare, pension system and to the whole new now privatized services. The answer to fear is a new harshness and selfishness in social relationships as each compete to try to earn more.

After those years of worry and stagnation, a real boom is starting to appear possible for Everstate, and its growth rate, although still low, is above those of its neighbours.

To be continued…

* See for an example of the way those incentives can interact, Nolan, Janne E., and MacEachin, Douglas, with Kristine Tockman, Discourse, Dissent and Strategic Surprise Formulating U.S. Security Policy in an Age of Uncertainty. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, 2007; Chester A. Crocker, “Thirteen Reflections on Strategic Surprise,” Georgetown University, 2007.

** For dynamics between national security issues and apparatus and the movie industry, see Jean-Michel Valantin, Hollywood, the Pentagon and Washington. Anthem Press, 2005.

*** Some countries within the OECD are currently downsizing their civil service sector and  using privatization, with noticeable variations according to countries, see, for a study on the EU members, Forward Planning and International Affairs Bureau (B2), General, Directorate for Public Administration and the Civil Service, “Administration and the Civil Service in the EU 27 Member States: 27 country profiles” Republique Francaise, MINISTÈRE DU BUDGET, DES COMPTES PUBLICS ET DE LA FONCTION PUBLIQUE, 2008. With the 2010-2011 renewal of the crisis, downsizing in the public sector has increased, as for example, in the UK; government statistics on civil service employment since 1902. However, compared with the scenario used here, those changes have been or are  implanted over longer periods of time. For example, in Austria “The number of federal administration employees has fallen from 300,000 in 1985 to 133,000 at present” (2008). Further research on variations in the speed of the reforms and their impact would need to be undertaken.

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Methodological and research note

Working backward with ego networks

The method remains to use ego networks as previously. However, the model has been created in a forward manner, using existing work on state-building that takes as assumption an increase in needs and resources. Here the decisions taken in the scenario answer to a slightly different logic, as underlined in the previous post: they do not consider needs or state-building, but only a reduction of expenses.
We shall thus, in terms of ego network, sometimes have to work backwards, following the arrows from target to source to identify the value the source node could have, given the value attributed to the target node (this may also be seen as a variation on the method known as backcasting.)

Further research

Ideally, with more resources, notably a team of researchers, the values attributed to variables should be quantified, when the variables are about quantities. This will become even more obvious with the next posts.  Notably, it would be very interesting, assuming we were able to enter specific times for each link, to test the variation of those time periods according to changes in quantities, and vice versa. It is indeed possible – or even likely – that thresholds and tipping points may occur according to such variations. More broadly, such hypothesis could also be tested on qualitative variables, methodology to be defined.

2012 EVT – Scenario 1 – Mamominarch: Off with the State

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Last weeks’ summary: In 2012 EVT, Everstate (the ideal-type corresponding to our very real countries created to foresee the future of governance and of the modern nation-state) knows a rising dissatisfaction of its population. Plagued with a deepening budget deficit and an increasing need for liquidity, a related creeping appropriation of resources while the strength of central public power weakens to the profit of various elite groups and with an outdated worldview that promotes misunderstanding, disconnect and thus inadequate actions, the political authorities are increasingly unable to deliver the security citizens seek and risks to the legitimacy of the whole system increases. Alarmed by the rising difficulties and widespread discontent, the governing authorities decide to do something. Three potential scenarios or stories will be told: “Mamominarch: Off with the State,” “Panglossy: Same Old, Same Old,” and “Genuisy: the Making of History.”

(The reader can click on each picture to see a larger version in a new tab – a navigating map of posts is available to ease reading).

The Mamominarch Commission

Considering the difficulty of the problems at hand, and the need for a consensus among powerful elite groups, as well as regional and international actors, to see the array of measures applied, once they would be identified, Everstate’s government convenes a high level commission that must find out what has to be done.

The highest level of the government thus hand-picks to participate in the work: high level government and state officials, the latter representing civil servants, parliamentary representatives of the major parties, who had been in power alternatively for the last seven decades, famous economists Everstatan and foreign, the director of the Everstatan School of Liberal Politics, management experts, business leaders, notably the CEOs of Novstate and its friends companies, the CEOs of the largest banks and largest financial funds, business consultants, experts in new technologies, high level officials of the IMF and WTO and of the Regional Union. All powerfully stand for the normative order to which Everstate belongs and for the major entrenched elite groups. As an exception to this rule, the CEO of a very performing high-tech Everstatan company, Evernet, is also invited to represent the emerging elite group related to computing and networking.

After two months of intense debates and work, most often done by the staff of those personalities that participate in the high level working group, the Mamominarch Commission, as it is now known, reaches the conclusion that the root cause of the problems is an impossibility to match public expenses with public income, even in times of economic growth, and thus that the obvious solution is to drastically lower public expenses.

Structure of general government expenditures 2008 (OECD 2010)

Of course, this solution is designed in terms of expenses and not of needs, but is it really a problem? The normative model of the time, which has been just so successful into bringing wealth and growth, upholds free entrepreneurship, free trade and free market as ideal. Meanwhile, the state and especially its bureaucracy tend to be seen as expensive and inefficient, obviously unable to adapt to the new conditions as the deteriorating situation proves, and furthermore unable to contribute to ensure its primary mission, the security of its population as, again, the protests and the increasing tension shows. It thus makes complete sense to push the normative order one step further and to finally apply it fully: to rely on free entrepreneurial forces and on the market to provide for goods and services as much as possible, to always work in this direction, while the state must wither away. After a short period of adaptation everyone will be happy and definitely better off as balance will have been restored and this time permanently.

What will be more delicate to engineer is the short-term future, when further efforts in terms of income will be asked from the population, as existing debts must be reimbursed and interests paid. But, the difficulties will only exist for a very short period of time, as the renewed growth will rapidly make the effort painless.

Some civil servants will have to be laid off but as services will be taken over by the private sector, they will certainly find work again very rapidly, on the model of Novstate. Such a move may even enhance their career, as the economy will certainly be greatly boosted by this new system.

The Shadow Banking System, Conceptualized, designed and created by Zoltan Pozsar, The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, November, 2009

Furthermore, selling whole parts of the state, as has already been started, will bring in more money that will be used to reimburse debts, thus helping stabilise taxes. There will be no need to find really new taxes, except, maybe, for a short period of time, and especially no need to truly start thinking about ways to make the lenders’ nexus pay more tax – which is, anyway, something really difficult to craft as the whole financial system has become so complex, and would ask for international treaties, which would demand too long to obtain, assuming it were possible.*

Finally, as many members of the Commission underline, this will be good for business, attract investment, and put Everstate in rank to compete with the top financial and businesses orientated places in the world.

Only a minimum army and police will remain at state level. Most of the police force will now be under the responsibility of local towns, as, anyway, criminality has to be solved by proximity actions, on the ground, and through a better understanding of criminals. Operations against existing national threats will be shared between what remains of the defence forces, with a rising use of private contractors. Novstate’s CEO has pledged during the debates that his company and its friends businesses would do their utmost to fulfill any need Everstate would have in this matter.

PR, communication and advertisement specialists, as well as lobbyists, are now brought in to make sure that the conclusions and message of the Mamominarch Commission are delivered at best so that they become policy decisions adopted by Everstate’s governing bodies.

Everything goes indeed very smoothly and all Mamominarch’s conclusions are adopted.

To be continued…

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References

* Zoltan Pozsar, Tobias Adrian, Adam Ashcraft, and Hayley Boesky, Shadow Banking, Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports, no. 458, July 2010; “According to one measure of the size of the shadow banking system, it grew rapidly before the crisis, from an estimated $27 trillion in 2002 to $60 trillion in 2007, and remained at around the same level in 2010.” Financial Stability Board (FSB), Shadow Banking: Strengthening Oversight and Regulation, October 2011, p.1;  Brook Masters (2011-10-27). “Shadow banking surpasses pre-crisis level”. The Financial Times. accessed 2012-02-10.

 

2012 EVT: Rising Discontent (The Chronicles of Everstate)

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Last weeks’ summary: Everstate (an ideal-type for our very real countries created to foresee the future of the modern nation-state) is part of the international liberal order and ruled under a democratic parliamentary regime. Lately, its governance started being less efficient and as a result began to fail to ensure the security of Everstate’s citizens. Meanwhile, its economy showed sign of losing efficacy and its powerful elite groups fought hard to keep their status although they do not believe to be really at risk. The various degradations and tensions have started being felt and registered by the population. However, most Everstatan actors considered those as temporary crises and difficulties that will be shortly solved. At worst, some envisioned a serious crisis that would last a few years, maybe a decade of slow growth before everything went back to normal. Are they right? What does the future hold for Everstate?

(The reader will find detailed explanations on the methodology applied to this post at the bottom of the text and can click on each picture to see a larger version in a new tab). 

Dissatisfaction and tension of the population

Confronted with various mild but growing inefficiencies in terms of governance and economy, Everstatans are increasingly dissatisfied. They perceive the overall security provided by their political authorities as having started to decrease. At the beginning, it was imperceptible. Now, their discontent increases and cannot be ignored anymore. Indeed, more and more people feel relatively deprived as they contrast what they remember about their past satisfaction, what they had sought to achieve and what they now manage to obtain, whatever their efforts.

First, obvious new external military threats have arisen from foreign groups trying to implement their own state power. Those threats are widely labelled and known as “terrorism” or sometimes “radicalization” and have been partly solved through various efforts, notably those made in the areas of domestic security and law enforcement. Other threats have emerged from states that are considered as unfriendly, indeed at times dubbed “rogue states.” Both have started introducing an element of permanent and pernicious fear and unease in the population.

Then, the satisfaction of the population is affected by other factors that are not yet perceived and even less considered, integrated and successfully dealt with by Everstate’s political authorities.

The evolution of society has, over time, affected the ecological milieu, which has given rise to new types of pressures. In Everstate and in international settings, the reality of those pressures is still debated, which often leads to ignore or minimize their importance. Among those controversies, we find the end of cheap energy, notably oil-based energy, the safety of nuclear energy, food and water availability, climate change, the increase of various types of pollution, and the return of the fear of deadly pandemics. Furthermore, because those pressures are new or have not been felt for centuries, the existing normative models do not consider them. Those models, indeed, focus on other matters, those issues that were crucial when the norms were constructed. Considering the importance of normative models and related thinking, the lack of possible concern integrated within the normative model also contributes to minimise the perception of and interest in those new pressures.

Meanwhile, natural uncontrollable catastrophes such as earthquakes or volcano eruptions, linked to the fate of geography, are still hitting societies blindly. Everstate fears no volcano on its territory, but some areas, by the seashore notably, are prone to earthquakes, although no severe one has occurred for more than two centuries. Typhoons and hurricanes, floods and droughts are still devastating worldwide, but Everstate’s climate makes such happenstance quite impossible. And yet… an increase in frequency and intensity of extreme weather events started being registered a few years ago (e.g. Munich-Re, 2010). Although the scientific understanding of many of those phenomena is still imperfect, a similar trend was registered in many countries of the world. Increasingly, it was identified as related to those changing conditions brought about by human activity.

Furthermore, previous evolutions have affected natural resources. Those that are finite have now been used by the population and thus are obviously not available anymore. Those that are considered as renewable have also sometimes been altered in a way that makes them unavailable for a specific location. For example, if water is fundamentally a renewable resource, the depletion of groundwater in some areas, or pollution, which can only be removed over centuries, in others transform water for specific areas and lapse of time into a finite resource. Such shortages directly impact the population, as people cannot benefit from those resources anymore, be it in terms of direct use or because whole sectors of activity disappear leading to unemployment and general impoverishment. Furthermore, by bearing upon the overall ecological setting, they contribute to create new kinds of pressure for survival. Meanwhile, other potential resources are emerging but are not yet fully integrated into ways of life. Thus, they cannot fully take the place of the past, used resources, when replacement is possible. They cannot either help face the whole range of new pressures for survival. So far, in Everstate, no complete shortage in response to a need had to be faced. On the contrary, in a still recent past as when coal mines were closed, whole sectors of activity have been swept away.

At the same time, evolution has generated new capabilities that are progressively used against society in a deadly and damaging way. Thus, new threats appear. Everstate and its allies have so far labelled those threats as unconventional, which definitely underlines their novelty, even in terms of thoughts. A few of them – but by all means not all as they permanently evolve –  have been identified and range from cyber-security (linked to the digital and communication technology and their use) to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

As long as Everstate has not designed the way to deal (through governance) with those new multiple pressures, the degree with which those pressures impacts society progressively increases, while the level of satisfaction of the population decreases. Now, this way cannot even start being imagined because those stresses are not fully registered and thus even less understood. Indeed, the Everstatan system, as the system of other countries, was built to deal with other – past – pressures.

Thus, dissatisfaction is bound to increase for some time in Everstate. This discontent itself, feeds progressively into a domestic escalation spiral. In turn, it increases incrementally the degree of pressure that is exerted on Everstate as a whole.

Meanwhile, Everstatans continue to seek a security that is appearing as increasingly distant and elusive…. to be continued.

How to? Application of the methodology used to construct the narrative.

The variable that will serve to start the narrative is “pop level of satisfaction (sec) s3,” i.e. level of satisfaction of the population regarding security for the third phase or step of our dynamic model. To help the reader understand the methodology, the words corresponding to an influencing or influenced variable or node for the main narrative will be in bold in this post.

When needed, to obtain more information on those nodes, we shall display the corresponding ego network that will hep nourishing and constructing the narrative.

In terms of outline, we start with the variables causing what we try to narrate (the discontent of the population), looking first at those linked to s2 (the previous step, temporally), then moving to s3. Once all the causing variables have been seen, then one progresses to the impact variables, which will allow us moving the story forward, with the exception of groups of variables, both influencing and influenced, for which the story is clearer if told as a group or system, e.g. the first paragraph. The task of detecting those groups of variables is eased by the use of network visualisation tools as those groups are literally shown by the lay-out (here Force Atlas).

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References

Munich Re, ”Extreme Weather Events – Signs of climate change?” 5 August 2010:

“These facts show that global warming is playing a significant role in the rising number of extreme events. Analyses performed by Munich Re’s natural catastrophe database, the most comprehensive in the world, substantiate this increase: the number of extreme weather events like windstorm and floods has tripled since 1980, and the trend is expected to persist.” [my emphasis]

Constructing a foresight scenario’s narrative with Ego Networks

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In many foresight methods, once you have identified the main factors or variables and reach the moment to develop the narrative for the scenarios, you are left with no guidance regarding the way to accomplish this step, beyond something along the line of “flesh out the scenario and develop the story.”*

Here, we shall do otherwise and provide a straightforward and easy method to write the scenario. We shall use the dynamic network we constructed for Everstate – or for another issue – and the feature called “Ego Network” that is available in social network analysis and visualisation software to guide the development and writing of the narrative.

Ego network

An ego network is, basically, the network that surrounds or is centered upon a single variable or node, called, in this case, an “ego.” This network will be the backbone of our narrative.

The depth of an ego network is the length of the path between the selected ego and a linked node or variable. An ego network of depth 1 will thus display all variables or nodes that are linked to the selected ego by only one edge (link, arrow), either incoming or outgoing. If we take the example of the network centred on the ego “country’s geopolitical position s3” (reminder: s3 means step 3 in our dynamic mapping), which is the first variable we shall use to set the stage for Everstate, then we obtain the graph above.

An ego network of depth 2 would show all variables linked to the ego with a path between each variable and our ego equal to a maximum of 2 edges (for an ego network centered around variable A, examples of paths of length 2, or 2 edges are A->B->C and D->F->A). Always using the same example, we would have a much larger graph for an ego network of depth two, as shown on the left hand side.

Save for rare exceptions, we shall use ego networks of depth 1. The analyst can try different depths for her/his ego network and choose the depth that allows her/him to tell the clearer story.

Working with Ego Network in Gephi

Once the overall graph is constructed, it is extremely easy to obtain any ego network with Gephi.

In “Overview,” as shown on the screenshot below, select “filters” on the right hand side, and choose “Ego Network” in the section “Topology.” Then drag with the mouse “Ego Network” in the bottom right hand window “Queries.” In the “Node ID,” enter either the name of the variable you want to use or its ID, here 34. Then press OK and filter. The ego network redraws itself automatically in the “Graph” window. You can then apply any layout (bottom left hand window).

The complete network is accessed by clicking again on filter. One can then change ego or variable, or proceed with other tasks.

It is best to re-run the usual layout between filtering for two different ego networks to be able to benefit from the best possible visualisation for each ego network.

Using Ego Network to write the narrative

With one ego network

To start telling the narrative for a scenario, then one needs obviously to begin with a variable to which a value will have been attributed.

Continuing with the same example, we have set as variable “country’s geopolitical position s3” the value “medium range power,” as explained with the previous posts (Revisiting influence analysis and Variables, values and consistency in dynamic networks). This variable will be chosen as ego for the Ego Network (depth 1).

Then one uses one after the other linked variables to tell the story, each time attributing a value to that variable. Cross-consistency will need to be checked mentally and the analyst will have, of course, to remember the values s/he attributed to make sure the overall story is consistent and logical.

Here the first variables affecting our ego are “country geopolitical position s2,” “geographical location” “ecological setting” “new external military threats s3.” Thus, the corresponding narrative, as shall be fully seen in the post “Setting the Stage,” runs as follows (variables are inserted between brackets for the sake of explanation):

“As a medium state power [country’s geopolitical position s3] located on the Eurasian land mass [geographical location], Everstate had not seen its geopolitical position fundamentally altered since the end of the Cold War, and even since the end of World War II [country geopolitical position s2]. However, recently, some tensions had begun building up and Everstate had to start contending with them as they could easily transform in very concrete new external military threats [new external military threats s3].

What had contributed to maintain its geopolitical position were different factors. If the impact that its ecological setting could have had on its geopolitical position was remote and long forgotten, it nevertheless played a part [ecological setting]. Similarly, its continental climate, soften for the southeastern part by the influence coming from the sea was not seen as a factor influencing geopolitics anymore [geographical location, ecological setting]. The harshness of the snowy and mountainous North had long been seen as a bounty for tourism [geographical location, ecological setting]. The large river crossing the country from Northwest to Southeast was seen from the perspective of industry, trade and tourism and no longer as a possible way in for invaders [geographical location, ecological setting]. Finally, it had been centuries since the rich agricultural eastern plain had not attracted invaders or greedy neighbours looking for rich lands [geographical location, ecological setting].”

We can now move to the next group of influencing variables :

“Everstate’s army was performing, considering military techniques, expertise and previous experience, even if its size had been reduced [army’s size and performance s3].” Etc.

One then describes all the values for each variable, paying attention to the types of links, either cause or impact.

Moving from one ego network to another

When one sets the stage for the ideal-type (here Everstate), then one moves from one criteria initially selected to another, using each of them as ego, while the related network is used to develop the narrative. There is thus no difficulty regarding the choice of the next ego network.

Once this task accomplished, then one starts a new phase of the scenario building, really telling the story.

The variable that must be chosen to begin narrating the story depends upon the understanding the analyst has of the overall dynamics for the issue at hand. In our case, I chose, as shall be seen in a later post, the variable “pop level of satisfaction (sec) s3”  (the level of satisfaction regarding security as felt by the population – step 3) because it is crucial for understanding the overall dynamics of a polity. However, another analyst could have chosen to start with another variable. As no variable has been removed from the graph, all variables will be used anyway.

The variable is then used as ego, as explained previously. One starts with the influencing or causing variables. For each causing or influencing variable, to obtain details on this variable and thus better develop the narrative and explain the dynamics, the analyst will be able to use it as ego network. This will allow her to better flesh out the story.

Once causing variables have been detailed and a coherent story developed, then the analyst must move to the impacts or consequences. Each impact will be used as new ego, and a new paragraph or part written using the network of this ego.

The process is repeated until completion of the scenario.

Exception: groups or clusters of variables

For some variables that appear as tight groups or clusters, it makes more sense to develop a narrative including both influencing and influenced variables. In those case, then one shall tell the story for the whole group in one or two paragraphs. The task of detecting those groups of variables is eased by the use of network visualisation tools as those groups are literally shown by the lay-out (here Force Atlas).

Ultimately, it will be up to the analyst to decide how to tell the story according to which outline and how to handle the variables for the best possible result.

As we progress with the Chronicles of Everstate, the reader will become familiar with the method. To help the reader, the first post dealing with Everstate’s future, “The Chronicles of Everstate (2011 EVT – 2012 EVT): Discontent” (to be published on January 15), will also serve as example. It will recall briefly the methodology and the words corresponding to an influencing or influenced variable or node for the main narrative will be in bold.

Ego networks, an analyst’s weapon

Using ego network to develop the narrative is not only a support but it also helps ensuring that neither influencing factors nor impacts are forgotten. It allows fighting against many biases and gives a structured framework and outline to the analysis, thus assisting the analyst.

It will facilitate verification, revision and discussions among various analysts.

Furthermore, assuming the model has been developed scientifically, it can be used as proof or evidence of the validity of the scenario, which is crucial to obtain the trust of policy-makers and decision-makers, or more largely of all potential users of the strategic foresight scenarios.

* For example: Andrew Curry & Wendy Schultz, “Roads Less Travelled: Different Methods, Different Futures,” Journal of Futures Studies, May 2009, 13(4): 35 – 60; Jerome C. Glenn and The Futures Group International, “Scenarios,” The Millennium Project: Futures Research Methodology, Version 3.0, Ed. Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. 2009, Ch 19; Tom Ritchey, “Morphological analysis,” The Millennium Project: Futures Research Methodology, Version 3.0, Ed. Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. 2009, Ch 17.