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International Policymaking for Longtermists

Understanding and engaging in the UN system

Maxime Stauffer

Konrad Seifert

Nora Ammann

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Motivation

Policymaking

Howlett, 2020

Longtermist research

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Motivation

Policymaking

Howlett, 2020

Longtermist research

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Motivation

Policymaking

Howlett, 2020

Longtermist research

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Motivation

Policymaking

Howlett, 2020

Longtermist research

Influence

Learn

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Workshop overview

Module 1 – Understanding international policymaking

    • Potential andl imitations of international policymaking
    • Longtermist policymaking
    • Understanding international policy change

Module 2 – Engaging in policymaking

    • Challenges and best practices for effective policy engagement
    • UN Secretary General’s Our Common Agenda

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Logistics

  • Each module lasts 180min, including a 30-min break
  • Join us for lunch after each module
  • Mix of lectures and discussions
  • Take notes, interrupt, ask questions
  • Help us make it better for future iterations

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Scope & applicability

  • Actors
  • Instruments
  • Focus

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Scope & applicability: actors

The UN System

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Scope & applicability: actors

3’236 meetings annually,

207’147 delegates

The Geneva ecosystem

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Scope & applicability: instruments

    • Paris Climate Agreement

International treaties

    • ISO/IEC 27001 on information security

Standards

    • WHO’s four guidelines on anti-microbial resistance

Norms & guidelines

    • International Health Regulations

Regulations

    • UNSC Resolution 2231 (2015) on uranium mining for weaponization purposes

Sanctions

    • UN Sustainable Development Goals
    • UN SG Our Common Agenda

Agendas & narratives

    • WHO guideline review committee
    • UNSTATS reports

Operational processes

    • BWC meeting of state parties
    • UN General Assembly

Diplomatic processes

    • Member-state driven
    • IO-driven

Direction

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Scope & applicability: focus

Multilateral

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Bilateral

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The content of this workshop

    • Literature, interviews & practical experience

Source

    • International system and national ramifications

Generalizability

    • Mental models, examples and practices

Type

    • Boost understanding to then reflect on your research/work

Implications

    • Interest and pre-knowledge

Assumption

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Module 1

Understanding international policymaking

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Module content

Case study: UN SG’s Our Common Agenda

Understanding international policy change

Break

Longtermist policymaking

Is it worth it?

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Module 1 S1

UN Secretary General’s Our Common Agenda

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OCA here

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Module 1 S2

Understanding international policy change

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Lenses to understand policymaking

Historical analysis

Legal perspective

Evolution of norms

Political behavior

Comparative policy change

Practical experience

Grey literature

Narrative, constructivism

Effectiveness at problem-solving (policy analysis)

Societal lens

Social justice

Voting systems

Qualitative ethnographic research

(...)

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Policy change?

    • Paris Climate Agreement

International treaties

    • ISO/IEC 27001 on information security

Standards

    • WHO’s four guidelines on anti-microbial resistance

Norms & guidelines

    • International Health Regulations

Regulations

    • UNSC Resolution 2231 (2015) on uranium mining for weaponization purposes

Sanctions

    • UN Sustainable Development Goals
    • UN SG Our Common Agenda

Agendas & narratives

    • WHO guideline review committee
    • UNSTATS reports

Operational processes

    • BWC meeting of state parties
    • UN General Assembly

Diplomatic processes

    • Member-state driven
    • IO-driven

Direction

🡪 Change of a policy instrument in any direction

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Policy change?

🡪 Change of a policy instrument in any direction

How often and to what extend do policy instruments change?

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Regularities of policy change at national levels

🡪 A few budget re-allocations account for most policy change.

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🡪 Policy change is incremental most of the time.�

🡪 Policy change is punctuated.

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Regularities of policy change at international levels

Reasons for regularities to not generalize

    • More decentralized and less hierarchical, more time is spend for for preference formation and consensus shapingReasons to generalize
    • Less exposed to public pressure and not accountable to electorates in the same way
    • Less subject to clear divisions of responsibility, as IOs have more fluid and overlapping mandates

Reasons for regularities to generalize

    • Policy venues, just like the national political systems
    • Also subject to constant demands for policy in response to ongoing social processes through various channels
    • Also prone to capacity limitations that reduce their efficiency in responding to changing conditions

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Regularities of policy change at international levels

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Implications of policy change regularities for longtermist policy

  • Under and over-reactions are decent processes in the short-term
  • Reactive policymaking is very costly for the long-term
  • These regularities can help us adjust our expectations
  • But what explains them?

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Explaining regularities

  • Policymaking as a crowd event, friction
  • Four mechanisms
    • Attention
    • Opinion
    • Transfer & diffusion
    • Policy entrepreneurs

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1. Attention

  • What policy actors think about
  • Limited
  • Driven by beliefs, emotions and others’ attention
  • Can shift quickly
  • Collective attention is crystallized in policy agendas
  • Policy change happens because of change of attention, which result from
    • Triggers - events
    • Amplifiers – media / policy entrepreneurs
  • Attention builds on ambiguity

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2. Opinion

  • What actors think
  • Once policy actors focus their attention, coalitions form
  • Compromises, belief-updating, etc.
  • Policy broker, intermediaries

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3. Transfer & diffusion

  • Policy change spreads and can trigger more policy change
  • Three mechanisms
    • Transfer: top-down
    • Diffusion: imitation

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4. Policy entrepreneurs

Social acuity

    • Trust
    • Networks
    • How to use networks
    • Understanding others’ ideas, motives
    • Skilled at listening and creating mutual understanding

Problem definition

    • Attract and align attention
    • Narration

Tigh-knit teams

    • Coalitions
    • Centralize relevant skills
    • Focus on technical and political solutions

Lead by example

    • Willingness and capacity to invest resources
    • Commitment and concretization

Strategic

    • Anticipate and leverage windows of opportunity
    • Find right framings for which window

Champions?

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Overview

Attention

Opinion

Policy entrepreneurs

Transfer & diffusion

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Explaining policy change at the international level: two-level game

Country A

Diplomacy

Country B

Diplomacy

Country A

Domestic policy

Country A

Domestic policy

Level I

Level II

Possible solutions on topic X

  • 170 countries
  • Multiple topics
  • Multiple instruments
  • Adaptive (time. etc.)
  • Homogenity or heterogeneity between diplomacy and domestic policy (not dissociable)
  • Voluntary and involuntary defection
  • Strategic move at one table can facilitate coalitions at another table

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Explaining policy change at the international level: memetic space

Narratives & frames

Peace

Security

Disarmament

Global health

Global development

Humanitarian action

Migration

Human rights

Sustainability

Instrumentalizations

Inconsistent positions

Short vs long game

Policy entrepreneurs

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Explaining policy change at the international level: examples

    • Soft law
    • Narrative
    • Policy transfer

SDGs

    • Hard law
    • Successful and unsuccessful two-level game

Paris Climate Agreement

    • Covid-19 as trigger (attention)

WHO Pandemic treaty

    • Multiple games

BWC

    • MAD, multiple games
    • Two-level game

Nuclear Weapons

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Policy change in international policymaking

Attention

Opinion

Policy entrepreneurs

(International)

policymaking

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Questions?

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30-min break

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Module 1 S3

Longtermist policymaking

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Current research on longtermist policymaking and the problem of fit

Long-term perspectives

Inter-temporal ethics

Institutional and policy proposals

Criteria to choose proposals

Logics of change

Short-term and long-term issues

Drivers of shortermism / dilemmas

Long-term institutions

Systems to be governed over time

“Long-term institutional fit”

Wickedness

Intertemporality

GCRs

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Defining long-term institutional fit

Representational fit

Stauffer et al., 2021

Epstein et al., 2015

Spatial fit

Functional fit

Temporal fit

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Components of long-term institutional fit (applied to international system)

Dimensions

Criteria

Spatial fit

Foster global coordination

Temporal fit

Prevent risks

React to shocks

 

 

Functional fit

 

Address interconnectedness

Keep up with (technological) change

Account for social context

Deal with uncertainty

 

Representational fit

Account for current generations

Account for future generations

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So what?

Policymaking

Howlett, 2020

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So what?

Policymaking

Howlett, 2020

(Scientific) Knowledge

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The role of knowledge in policymaking: sources

Technocratic institutions

e.g. IPCC, WHO, IOM, JRC, etc.

Problem-solving institutions

Think tanks, NGOs

Grantmakers

Academia

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The role of knowledge in policymaking: mechanisms

Global

Policy making

Agenda-setting

Policy design

Implementation

Problem-framing

Knowledge production

Capacity-building

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Assessment

Methodological guidance

Tool development

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The role of knowledge in policymaking: mechanisms

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    • science and policy-making do not have the same priorities

Mis-alignment

    • science and policy do not have the same timeframes

Mis-timing

    • science and policy speak different languages

Mis-communication

    • science can be badly understood or instrumentalised

Mis-use

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The role of (longtermist) knowledge in policy change

  • Longtermist knowledge
    • Additional barriers
    • Pathways
  • Segway into module 2

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So what?

Policymaking

Howlett, 2020

Longtermist knowledge

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The role of (longtermist) knowledge in policy change

  • Longtermist knowledge
    • Additional barriers
    • Pathways
  • Segway into module 2

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Additional considerations specific to GCR science-policy (CHANGE)

Agenda-setting instead of policy design

Implicit versus explicit policy needs

Low research outputs

Zero to few recommendations

Waiting for windows of opportunity is potentially dangerous

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Discussion

  • tbd

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Types of knowledge and science advice (CHANGE)

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Descriptive knowledge

    • “Probability of risk x is 10% in 21st century”
    • Use: awareness raising, monitoring, goal-setting, etc.
    • State of GCR research: low to medium

Explanatory knowledge

    • “Cause X explains why probability is 10%”
    • Use: policy design, monitoring, etc.
    • State of GCR research: low

Prescriptive knowledge

    • “Governments should implement X to reduce probability from 10% to 5%”
    • Use: policy design, policy implementation
    • State of GCR research: very low

Conceptual knowledge

    • “GCRs can be thought of cascade of events”
    • Use: awareness raising, understanding, policy design, goal setting, etc.
    • State of GCR research: medium

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Module 1 S4

Is it worth it?

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Objection 1

Multilateralism is weak and fragile

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Responses

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1. Multilateralism is not replaceable

2. Room for improvement

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Objection 2: National-level policy matters more

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Responses

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1. Diversity of avenues of impact

2. Importance of small countries

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Objection 3: Engaging is not tractable

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Responses

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1. Difficulty is not a reason to not engage.

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Discussion

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Questions?

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Discussion - CHANGE

  • Does boosting single governments, notably through their defense/security communities, increase risks? Under which conditions?
  • Something along the lines of: what if we mess up global coordination?

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Questions?

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Overview of policy change and the place of knowledge

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Discussion

  • We have now: (1) int’l policy is important, (2) we have some visions to pursue, (3) policy change is incremental and punctuated, (4) mechanisms explain policy change, and (5) longtermist knowledge as X position. The question is: what do these point imply for institutes like FHI and others? How should they position themselves?

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Overview for tomorrow

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Module 2

Engaging in international policymaking

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Summary of module 1

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Module content

Ingredients for engaging in policymaking

Break

UN SG Our Common Agenda

Strategy Simon Institute

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What do we mean by ‘engagement’?

  • Engage to influence
  • Engage to learn
  • Everything is political and it’s not bad
  • There are ways to engage with high integrity, transparency, etc. and this is actually what we recommend
  • Power versus shortcuts

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Policy engagement and policy recommendations

Policymaking

Longtermist research

Policy recommendations

Policy engagement

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Policy engagement and policy recommendations

Policymaking

Longtermist research

Policy recommendations

Policy engagement

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4. A note on policy recommendations REDO SLIDE

Policy recommendations = policy proposals (regulation x, treaty y)

Knowledge brokering, advocacy and training can be pursued to disseminate policy recommendations

Knowledge brokering, advocacy and training can also be pursued to raise awareness, increase understanding, build communities, etc.

Knowledge brokering, advocacy and training can and should be pursued at the same time policy recommendations are being developed

    • They inform the development of policy recommendations
    • They develop networks for disseminating policy recommendations
    • They increase trust and increase the acceptability of policy recommendations

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Ingredients

  1. Challenges
  2. Longtermist policy engagement for full-time actors
  3. Advice for effective engagement as individual researcher
  4. Strengthening longtermist community’s engagement

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Challenges

  • Misfits
  • Social world and ambiguity and info spreading
  • Risks
  • Chicken and egg problem: you need to engage to be able to engage

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5. A note on potential risks (REDO)

  • Wrong ideas, models, etc.
  • Bad policy recommendations
  • Adversarial strategies
  • Identity politics
  • (...)

Negative impact

Lock-in effects

Bad reputation

  • Risks likely apply to all cause areas and all strategies
  • Risks are likely exacerbated in GCR contexts

Mitigation strategies:

  • Coordination, consultation, avoid unilateral actions
  • Account for risks in strategy

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Longtermist policy engagement for full-time actors

  • Strategies
    • Knowledge brokering
    • Advocacy
    • Training
  • Tactics (🡪 this gives an idea of the profession and considerations)
    • Entry points
    • Contexts
    • Insider & collaborative
    • Coordination
    • Multi-level
    • Network building
    • Framing
    • Risk mitigation
    • Sustain

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Full-time actors? (REDO)

Building networks in academia and policy

    • Find experts and end-users
    • Speed up collaboration set up

Foster exchanges

    • Build trust
    • Foster information flows
    • Provide neutral space

Improve research relevance

    • Understand policy implications
    • Find stakeholders
    • Build incentives for policy and research actors
    • Identify and develop relevant outputs

Anticipate windows of opportunity

    • Monitor policy activity
    • Collect implicit knowledge

Cross-pollinate learnings

    • Engage in multiple collaborations at once
    • Draw and share lessons learned

Foster sustainability

    • Ensure alignment
    • Ensure longer-term thinking

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Advice to individual researchers

  • Why should you care?
    • Policy is a medium for impact
    • Who will get your research across?
    • You can improve the relevance of your research
  • First, increase general exposure
    • Attend conferences, events
    • Conduct interviews
  • Second, build contextual understanding
    • Location
    • Institution
    • Topic
  • And then, either:
    • Policy entrepreneur track (push)
      • Third, learn basic skills
        • Public speaking
        • Policy writing
      • Fourth, strategize to become a policy entrepreneur
        • Network, find champions
        • Risks
        • Team
    • Researcher track (pull)
      • Build expertise
      • Be observable
      • Get invited to join expert committees

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10 career paths at the GCR science-policy interface

Research

    • Researcher: Produce high-quality policy-relevant research
    • Academic manager: Develop research strategies in line with policy processes

Policy

    • Policy official: Lead teams to develop GCR mitigation programs (program management, internal advocacy)
    • Technical officer: Conduct policy research to inform policymaking (synthesis, impact evaluation, etc.)
    • Politician: Advocate for GCR in politics (elections, campaigns, ...)

Intermediaries

    • Knowledge broker: Find intersections between GCR research and GCR policy and connect both spheres
    • Grant-maker: Fund GCR science-policy work
    • Trainer: train researchers and policy actors on GCR science-policy
    • Policy researcher: conduct policy research to inform policymaking (synthesis, impact evaluation, etc.)

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Across

    • Policy entrepreneur: Develop networks, skills and knowledge to bridge science and policy

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Engaging as a community

  • People at various points of the chain
    • Research
    • Intermediaries
    • Policy
    • Funders
  • Macro: building most influential capacity in main policy hubs
  • Micro: building networks, skills, etc.
  • The sequence likely matters
    • Build capacity
    • Develop solutions
    • Push / influence
    • Learn
    • Iterate
  • Coordination is key

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Discussion

  • tbd

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30-min break

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Start of OCA here

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SI strategy here

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Overview of everything

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max@simoninstitute.ch

konrad@simoninstitute.ch

Thank you

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Objection 1

Multilateralism is weak and fragile

Objection 2: National-level policy matters more

Objection 3: Engaging is not tractable

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Objection 1

Multilateralism is weak and fragile

Powerless

National interests trump international interests

Arm races

Weapons control

Climate change

Fragile

Relatively new institution

Irrelevant on its own

Human rights violations are on-going (China, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, etc.)

BWC or CWC took a very long time to develop and remain limited in scope

Fragility to shock: Covid-19 leading to US disengagement from WHO

UN total budget approximate 50bn. CH budget is ~80bn. US budget is 4.8tn.

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Responses to:

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Objection 1

Multilateralism is weak and fragile

The replaceability argument is not valid.

Unique instruments (e.g. treaties)

Geneva conventions (mass atrocities)

Policy diffusion is needed

Global narratives need iterations

Kellog-Bryand Pact

SDGs

Weaknesses indicate room for improvement

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Objection 2: National-level policy matters more

Policy implementation happens at the national level

Detailed policy design is at national level

Clearer routes for policy change at the national level

Higher potential, higher feasibility

The interests of super powers dominate all the relevant policy topics

Policy issues relevant to the long-term future depend on the decisions of a few countries

AI development and military use

Smaller countries and UN are dwarfed in relevance

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Responses to:

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Objection 2: National-level policy matters more

International and national policymaking are not mutually exclusive.

National policy is necessary but most likely not sufficient.

Diversity of avenues to impact is desirable

Uncertainty over which paths to impact are best

Synergies between different paths to impact

Avoiding grit-locks in case a path suddenly becomes blocked

Events in a small country may be amplified and lead to GCRs

weakest-link-in-the-chain argument

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Objection 3: Engaging is not tractable

Opaque causality chain

Potential waste of resources

Slow feedback loops

Potential risks

Valid for policymaking in general, but exacerbated in international policymaking

International policymaking suffers from inertia

Bureaucratic and strategic inertia

More effective to circumvent

Too slow for responding to urgent problems

Security Council unable to reform itself

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Responses to:

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Objection 3: Engaging is not tractable

On opacity

Lack of evidence is not a reason for not engaging

Engaging can limit harm/risk

There are success stories

If it is necessary, we need to figure out how to engage, despite difficulties

Still a lot to learn to define whether it’s worth it

On inertia

True, but room for improvement

The UN is not a single actor and not completely top-down

Engaging is a way to define where engagement is not worth it