How? Operationalizing the social progress agenda

Reducing complexity, identifying priority actions

The key priority for the Panel is to provide actionable insights and recommendations based on inspiring case studies of initiatives and reforms that are directly relevant to pursuing the social progress agenda. Reports, case studies, briefs, knowledge maps and all other material that will serve the broad social progress agenda will focus on:

Better understanding the main challenges humanity currently faces, with a special attention to their causal interdependence.
Identifying the key drivers and action points by which societal transformation may be initiated, with a special attention to mapping the power structures that undergird the current situation.

The graph below draws a roadmap for the Social Progress Agenda that the Panel wants to operationalize around for main components:

Reforming the economic and social system, designing reforms and transformations that address the structural flaws of current institutions and regulations.
Unleashing the potential for social change, by fostering social innovations and experimentation.
Strengthening democracy and participation at all levels, in order to improve collective action and enhance the legitimacy of public decisions.
Promoting global security and solidarity, to foster peaceful conflict resolution and enhance global cooperation for planetary well-being.

Roadmap of IPSP activities

The bottom of the graph affirms the ambition of the Panel to be resolutely non-partisan but undeniably political:

On the “knowledge action space,” the goal is, with topical productions, to contribute to the creation and dissemination of knowledge about the challenges and opportunities of our time, to identify adaptive solutions and to share actionable recommendations to spur productive public debates, and to raise the level of expertise of the actors of social progress;
On the “political action space”, the goal is to facilitate the formation of large coalitions of actors for social progress (civil society organizations, private business, philanthropy, local, regional and national governments, international organizations, etc.), across sectors and across regions of the world, in particular channeling ignored and repressed voices, as well as to identify and support specific reforms and transformations.

Building fluid coalitions of actors for social progress

The social progress agenda is not associated with a specific, homogeneous set of actors. This reflects the complexity and the diversity of current social structures around the world. Pursuing social progress appears dependent on building cross-sectoral coalitions of the willing.

Some traditional actors mediating various social interests are receding, though not disappearing, and unequally across regions of the world: political parties, unions, traditional churches and related charities, democratic governments, charismatic thinkers.
In contrast, new actors are rising in numbers and force: transnational business, wealthy philanthropists, civil society and secular NGOs, new religious proselytes, dark money, authoritarian governments, criminal and terrorist international networks, social media influencers and manipulators.
The interdependent power dynamics among these actors are complex. The scales of operations of these various actors vary a lot, but scalability has increased with new technologies, although many movements formed through social media mobilization appear short-lived and with limited impact (Me-too, Occupy, Climate Fridays…). Civil society, full of promising initiatives, is under stress with the rise of authoritarianism, even in liberal democracies.
The Panel also involves numerous researchers and teachers, who are well placed, not just as scholars but also as actors, to scrutinize the changing societal needs for education in a highly uncertain and fractious world, and for institutions that manage the creation and dissemination of science in a culturally and politically polarized context.

What coalitions of actors (of different types, geographical origins, missions, scales) can be formed and be impactful? What agendas and types of interventions can gather momentum and attract them? How to prevent counterproductive tensions between actors with imperfectly aligned agendas and divergent forms of action? These are the key questions that the Panel will try to answer and make accessible to all interested actors.

Advancing a proposal for systemic transformation to better societies

Many actors from international organizations as well as from non-governmental organizations have expressed the need to articulate their topic-specific, regional or global actions to a systemic approach to societal transformations. There is a growing sense that the piecemeal or sectoral implementation of good public policies, inspiring civil society initiatives and positive individual/community behaviors do not suffice to counter the negative social, environmental and governance externalities produced by the current power structures and by the predominant forms of economic organizations. The clear identification of the main causes of these negative externalities is key to develop a design, a sequencing, and an implementation of actions that would transform the dynamics at play.

The proposed systemic transformation path will identify the key action points and drivers to better societies. It will help navigate through the complex array of processes and actors in society that make societal change occur. It will provide future coalitions for social progress with a clear indication of how power structures need to be reformed or transformed in order to build a positive and impactful collective momentum. It will not reduce the importance, nor the variety of worldviews and of intermediate goals but will stress that these can be compatible with pursuing the main goals of a social progress agenda.

Main topics

The four main components of the Social Progress Agenda provide broad priorities for the work of the Panel. More specific topics are proposed under each of the four headings, based on the deliberations of the IPSP Advisory Board. The highlighted topics will be dealt with first. Additional topics are presented to illustrate the other key issues that fall in line with the broad priorities and will be taken up later on, along with new topics that will emerge from the future unfolding of innovations, opportunities, crises, and calls for action[1].

Two general principles will characterize the work of the Panel on each of these topics:

To avoid disciplinary and thematic silos, and instead to adopt a holistic view cognizant of the strong interdependence between the components of societal structures;
To address a wide set of change-makers, with a strong focus on civil society, but also including policy-makers, civil servants, international organizations, business networks, think tanks, students and researchers.

The key ambition is to emphasize interlinkages between sectoral challenges and opportunities, to propose inspiring case studies and recommendations, and to foster the building of large intersectoral coalitions. Projects that fit this ambition will receive priority. The work undertaken by the Panel on these topics will serve a three-pronged strategy:

To map and gather forces that are inherently attached to the social progress agenda, including oppressed populations and their advocates,
To modify incentives to align the goals of powerful actors (such as governments and businesses) with the social progress agenda,
To design recommendations and policy initiatives that can achieve the desired transformations.

While reformists usually focus on the last component, the Panel aims at highlighting the importance of the first two, and at building a corpus of knowledge about implementation mechanisms with a strong bottom-up aspect and new methods of building coalitions of cross-sectoral actors to promote the social progress agenda.

[1] The Panel will start its activities by the launching of six to eight working groups on priority topics. After this initial round, it will consider the possibility to issue periodic open calls for collaborative projects.

Reforming the economic and social system: the way forward

Measuring What We Value: Beyond GDP and profit
Governments pursue GDP growth and corporations maximize profit, with disastrous consequences for quality of life, human flourishing and the natural environment. A new nexus is emerging around social well-being and cohesion, agency and stakeholder value, and ecological footprint, and needs to be associated with new indicators and implementation strategies/policies as well as more inclusive governance toward a democratic economy.
Steering technological change – democratically (generative AI, quantum, biomedicine)
Societies need to ensure that technology develops as a means to support human activities (rather than replacing them, and seeking to increase profit) starting with increasing our capacities to address global priority challenges. The orientation of technological innovation has public good effects that require defining fair and inclusive mechanisms to represent societal interests.
Development needs and revised aspirations
Meeting basic needs is possible while respecting the planetary boundaries. Does the environmental crisis require reorienting purpose and adopting responsible consumption as the new ideal? How should economic development be reoriented, how can the constraints borne by the poor be addressed? Can dematerialization and circularity pave the way for a new concept of abundance?
Getting out of the extractive paradigm (toward nature, workforce, international relations)
The ecological transition requires reconceptualizing our attitude toward “nature” and recognizing we are part of a community of life – but something similar is needed in economic relations and in geopolitics. How can this vision of a “common good” and a “common fate” be promoted and implemented?
Human potential wasted: how a lack of education, health care, and mutual support suppresses flourishing and deprives us of human genius and collective intelligence
The pursuit of efficiency is often associated with a Darwinian selection approach and a concentration of resources on an elite, as well as aggressive competition. What is not documented is the waste of human potential that such an approach entails, by depriving many groups and individuals of the means to develop their capacities. A fuller assessment of efficiency of human flourishing is needed.
Radical inequalities: foreseeing and preventing them
Unlike the spread of antibiotics and standard vaccines around the world after WWII which contributed to reducing life expectancy gaps, new technologies in healthcare and AI may generate massive inequalities in access to life-prolonging or life-enhancing devices, due to their cost. Can such massive inequalities be prevented?

Unleashing the potential of social change

Inspirations, social progress and behavioral change
Individual behavior change is a powerful driver of change in many areas of society (health, food, education, social inclusion, etc.). Better understanding successful examples of nudging for social progress would provide important insights for public policies as well as for interventions designed by civil society and/or private organizations.
Entrepreneurship and social purpose
An important driving force of entrepreneurship is purpose. Free enterprise cannot be justified as being good for business; it can be justified only as being good for society. Finding ways to foster the development of social purpose in corporations is essential to transform the dynamics of economic organization and to spur social change.
Cities and Social Progress
Large cities are a unique type of community with a sufficient economic base for impactful social, environmental and technological experimentation, and a human scale enabling greater participation. What could be expected from greater coordination among them across the world? How will the urban-rural relation evolve?
Inventing a joint future for civil society, nation states, international organizations
Many voices advocate giving a greater, more established role to civil society actors in social and political mechanisms (social work, participatory governance…). Is it possible to institutionalize the role of civil society actors without undermining their legitimacy and their link to grassroots? What would be their interaction with nation states and international organizations?
Indigenous communities and social progress
From deliberative democracy to the legal status of nature, indigenous communities have been inspiring social innovation and solutions. How can indigenous and other communities cooperate on a mutually shared social progress agenda?

Governance, democracy and participation

Efficient barriers against democratic backsliding
Defining a democratic ideal is one thing, erecting protections against democratic backsliding is another. What types of democratic regimes are more vulnerable, and how do various countries fare in this respect? For what reasons? How to best prevent these evolutions and counter the current trend towards more authoritarian, nationalist regimes?
Ecological rule of law
Environmental global and local public goods require innovative regulation mechanisms that are currently largely missing, or dependent on volatile national political jockeying. Moreover, existing regulations fail to be thoroughly implemented, and could be mobilized and extended for the defense of the environment.
Information as a priority public good
The availability of reliable and digestible information is key to the quality of public deliberation and the smooth functioning of democracy. This is therefore a public good, but it is not treated as such in most countries, under the pressure of private interests or authoritarian governments. Likewise, internet is based on a “neutrality” principle but is in fact largely governed by profit. Developing a strategy with civil society and other relevant actors to protect and promote the informational public good is urgent.
How to strengthen participation in deliberation?
What is the best level for mobilizing citizens in organized deliberative mechanisms? What powers should citizen or constituent assemblies be given? How much could this contribute to improving the quality of public debates and democratic deliberation?
Dark money and the environmental, social and democratic crises
Vested interests have fed disinformation campaigns for tobacco, pesticides, fossil fuels, unhealthy foods, and have funded related dangerous or complicit political groups which have also destabilized institutions and entrenched inequalities. How can transparency be improved? What other tools can be used?

Promoting human security and global solidarity

Global solidarity and global citizenship
Global safety nets have the potential to foster the emergence of a global citizen, but require mechanisms that transcend or bypass nation states. Linking the creation of new global solidarity mechanisms with a global momentum around the ecological transition may be politically necessary to achieve a successful transition—and an important opportunity for social progress.
Peace and human security at the world level
How to reduce conflict, violence and human rights violations without a new world governance? Should this mainly involve background factors (e.g., reducing inequalities and environmental disruptions) or innovative institutions (peace-building and policing agents of a new type)?
Can imperialism be eradicated? Economic, social, cultural roots of domination
Empires and colonies remain, even if often hidden under legal disguises (“federations”, “territories”) in the current world. Is there a pathway to the complete elimination of this pattern of domination of a nation on another?
Country alliances: the future of global governance?
There is a diversity of clubs of countries, many of which are regional trade zones, while some seek greater political integration. How can such clubs lead or affect global cooperation and global governance? What kind of global democratic arrangements and institutions would be able to address global issues?
Unhabitable Tropics: social, economic and political consequences
How can the world cope with increased uninhabitability of densely populated areas under climate change? Increased scarcity of key resources such as water will exacerbate conflicts, and populations displaced by extreme weather events, heat and floods will need a massive solidarity effort.

Breaking taboos, questioning sacred cows, thinking out of the box

Additional specific projects will be organized around the goal of revisiting conventions or notions, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the Agenda 2030, which have acquired a consensual status that is actually problematic, fragile, or counterproductive. Breaking these taboos may launch productive debates about societal goals and power structures.

Nation State: A recent invention, the modern nation State needs be reformed to make greater room for emancipation, participatory governance and global cooperation.
Exploration 1: The development of State capacities and the emergence of an emancipatory State in selected (low-income to high income) developing/emerging economies.
Sustainable development: Development needs are unmet for many populations, but sustainability has remained an elusive quest and a whitewashing rhetoric.
Agenda 2030: The SDGs need a reformulation and a new strategy for implementation, adapted to the new challenges and the roadblocks that have emerged since 2015.
Human Rights Declaration: Written in 1948 “to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom”, the Universal Declaration needs revisiting and should include a global implementation mechanism.
Sovereignty: Self-determination is still the dream of many nations, but sovereignty is also a key obstacle to global cooperation.