The International Panel on Social Progress (IPSP) presents the findings of its just released draft report during a meeting entitled “Is Social Progress around the Corner?” on Wednesday 7 September at Maison de la paix. The objective is to bring panel authors together with experts from leading international organisations and to propose tools and ideas to decision-makers and stakeholders, on the basis of a synthesis of academic knowledge about economic, political and social institutions and processes. As IPSP expert, Marc Fleurbaey, Professor at Princeton University, presents this initiative.
What is the IPSP about?
This creation of the panel was motivated by several observations. First, there is a large ideological void left by the demise of communism, and it appears urgent to offer a positive alternative to re-emerging fundamentalisms. Second, the lack of a long-term vision of possible forms of social progress contributes to ineffective policymaking and disaffection from the electorate for a political process that does not bring innovative solutions. Third, existing panels (such as the panel on climate change) are focused on specific topics, with an inevitable techno-scientific bias, and do not have the ability to address broad societal issues. Fourth, there is a gap between the public debate, often very naïve about key institutional issues (such as the respective roles of the market and the state), and social science, and researchers have a responsibility to make their knowledge available and actionable.
In a nutshell, the ambition is to bring new material to the public debate in order to help change-makers, as well as to make social science speak with one collective voice in order to be more useful in the perspective of social progress. We also hope to encourage more research on the topic of long-term social transformations.
Coordination and organisation must have been crucial to the achievement of such a project. How did you work to ensure the quality of the report’s conclusions?
A scientific council guided the selection of the authors who were to represent genders, disciplines and regions of the world. We have a great team of about 260 authors. The quality of the conclusions depends both on their quality and on the quality of the commenting process. We will be seeking many comments from a wide diversity of readers in the autumn of 2016 and the final report will be prepared next year. The conclusions will remain provisional until then.
Why do you wish to present your report to international organisations in Geneva and what do you expect from the conference?
International organisations are increasingly important in a globalised world, and have unique expertise and experience with policymaking in different regions of the world. Getting their feedback on this first draft is therefore essential for us. We also hope that by engaging a dialogue with them early in the process, we will be able to be more useful to them and have more influence through their action. Furthermore, the selected topics of the four round tables, “Inequalities and social progress”, “Good jobs for all?”, “Health and the contours of human life” and “Global governance”, resonate with the main domains in which these organisations work.
Many colleagues from the Graduate Institute are members of the panel, including Shalini Randeria and Vinh-Kim Nguyen, who are part of the steering committee, and Gopalan Balachandran and Grégoire Mallard, who codirect a chapter on global governance. It is great to extend our partnership with the Institute through this meeting in Geneva.
Can you give us a glimpse of some major or surprising findings of the report?
The most surprising finding is that chapter teams are able to co-sign texts on difficult issues with different schools of thought and disciplines involved! Of course, the organisers were betting on this, but many outside observers were sceptical. We can therefore hope to produce a report that has both consistency of content and the authority of collective authorship.
About the content, here are a few key messages that I have seen emerging from a sample of chapters:
- It is possible to change society significantly and for the better; capitalism as we know it is not the end of history.
- Improving society involves relying on the market economy, whose liberating power should not be neglected.
- The action of the state is essential, but redistribution is only one part, and the setting up and maintenance of adequate institutions are key feature.
- Shifting the focus of policy from economic outcomes to wellbeing and human flourishing is necessary for many reasons, including sustainability.
- The focus is also shifting from the distribution of resources to the distribution of power (governance) and information.
- Modernisation is no longer the grail, and respectful dialogue across cultures is the new horizon.
- In addition to institutional reform, developing an ethos of cooperation appears important.
The IPSP wishes to stimulate thinking on the prospect of social progress in the coming decades. Do you really think that social progress is around the corner?
In a sense, yes; in another sense, no. The bright side is that some basic aspects of the desirable institutions are well known (markets and democratic governance in particular), and that in many domains and places we can easily identify the direction of improvement. The dark side is that resistance against progress is huge, as is the inertia of institutions. The report should hopefully provide some answers about the political process by which positive change can happen, and bottom-up initiatives may be more promising than top-down policymaking. The panelists are preparing suggestions for action for all relevant change-makers, including ordinary citizens.
> More information about the conference
> Download the draft report
> Watch a video of Marc Fleurbaey on the IPSP