The Politics of Future Images: Visions of the Future in Dutch Scientific Advisory Councils, 1967-1980

During the height of the Cold War, the future as an object of scientific inquiry gained traction among both Western and Eastern nations, resulting in new fields such as future studies. Yet future studies was a motley field with a variety of techniques, conceptions of the future, and political vision. The relation between state and science; between science, democracy and citizenship were constantly at stake in the images of the future that future studies provided. This paper takes a look at the institutionalization of scientific expertise on the future in the Netherlands from 1967 to 1980, and investigates the ideas on democracy, citizenship and state planning present in the competing imaginaries of the future at the time. By investigating the different modeling techniques of the different future research group active in the Netherlands during that period, I will argue that these ideas were intrinsic to the scientific practices of future researchers. Modeling was instrumental for forming images of the future, while the politics of future images informed the modeling practices. I will thus try to show that different research groups with different models also adhered to different political ideals. At the end of the paper, I want to shed some light how future research has influenced the organization of advisory councils and policy analysis by considering how modeling techniques from the 60s and 70s have been repurposed to fit neoliberal agendas.