Up to now, the IPSP has been largely focused on analyzing the key trends and challenges facing societies around the world and identifying proven policies that are widespread in the most cohesive societies and deserve to be widely implemented. It flagged several social innovations, such as the universal basic income, workplace democracy, or the use of sortition and participatory deliberation in politics, that could be further experimented and brought up to scale. It developed general visions about how to address key issues, for instance, combining redistribution with pre-distribution to promote social inclusion, governing the communications and media system as a common good, democratizing the economy and raising corporate responsibilities, mobilizing civil society for social cohesion and improving checks and balances, or empowering international organizations for policy coordination.
Far from having reached its end point, the history of humanity is currently accelerating and the crucial choices made in the first half of the century will lock in the future of the Earth for a long time. At this very special juncture in the history of humanity, there is a vital need for:
- the continued production of reports and briefs based on collective intelligence,
- the identification, support and dissemination of solution ideas
- the pursued implementation of transformative social innovation.
There is already a flurry of production of policy papers by many organizations and think-tanks, and, by and large, one can favorably assess the general consensus that emerges from such rich production as quite reasonable and attentive to the multiple threats we are collectively facing.
What the IPSP can bring is a capacity for analysis that is guided by a general vision of promoting social progress and a keen awareness of the structural interlinkages between the components of societies. IPSP will produce research for action briefs and reports, develop an open digital platform and organize events that will shed light on solutions for the most active and forward-looking components of our societal structures.
The accumulation of these contributions will produce a continuous update on the broad picture of the evolution of societies and will help actors connect particular topics and actions to key transversal challenges. The focus will remain on the three main and interdependent challenges of our time —environment, social cohesion, governance— as a compass for societal change actions.
Social tipping points, power realities and sustainable collective aspirations will receive special attention given their strategic importance in societal transformations. Elucidating and bridging gaps between perceptions among actors on the ground and statistics, between perceptions of different social groups on critical societal issues, as well as gaps between civil society actors and policymakers will represent initial priorities of the analytical and dissemination work to be undertaken by the Panel.