Events
Visions for the Future: challenges to the realisation of system change
3-4 July 2025 Workshop
The discussion about the socio-economic system has recently intensified. This system is often characterized as a capitalist economic system, under neoliberal governance of the public sector, and a focus on welfare rather than wellbeing. It has created massive material welfare, globally lifted many people out of poverty, and has expanded economic liberties for many. However, there are also problems that are either caused, or insufficiently addressed, by this system: a deep ecological crisis, rising inequalities, excessive corporate power, deficits in the non-material dimensions of wellbeing, and persisting disadvantages related to race, gender, disability, class, and other groups. Moreover, the question arises as to how it should respond to demographic change and socially disruptive technologies. Not surprisingly, there have been many calls for new visions for a better socio-economic system.
Several proposals that claim to improve how our socio-economic system has been formulated. These proposals include accounts of degrowth, the well-being economy, the basic income society, workplace democracy, property-owning-democracy, stakeholder capitalism, community wealth building and others. Yet, so far, there has not been a comprehensive normative analysis that allows us to rigorously compare these proposals, which makes it difficult for scholars, citizens, and politicians to know which vision for the future is most promising. The Visions for the Future project will conduct this analysis as well as examining whether different proposals can be combined or modified into hybrid proposals in order to generate new visions.
The Visions for the Future July 2025 Workshop will introduce the research project, and invites scholars who have contributed to the development of the visions listed above to engage in a discussion regarding the promise of, and challenges faced by, the visions. The discussion will offer the opportunity to consider each vision individually, and further will explore the ways in which different visions may be complementary or contradictory. The Workshop is one of the first of a series of workshops of the project, and aims to promote a network of scholars and practitioners working on solutions to better the current socio-economic system.
To do so, the Workshop invites scholars to respond to the question:
What are the challenges to the realisation of each Vision?
This overarching question will relate to further sub-questions for consideration:
- What are the systemic constraints and challenges to the visions’ realisation?
- To what extent do these proposals have the potential to undermine, reform or reinforce the neoliberal system of governance and markets?
- What are the constraints and preconditions (including (inter)governmental, (inter)state, financial, political, normative and human behavioural) required to realise a vision?
- What kind of theory of change or action is demanded by each vision?
- Who are the agents of justice and change related to each vision?