Introduction

Long-term governance (LTG) can be understood as a necessary response to the tendency to prioritize present concerns over future challenges or opportunities—an issue widely regarded as a structural weakness of contemporary Western democracies (van Assche et al. 2021; Ojanen 2025). Temporality has become increasingly central in environmental policy: While societal tensions require significant time resources for democratic deliberation, ever more ambitious targets generate immense pressure for acceleration. Problems such as environmental pollution, energy transition and nuclear waste disposal thus fall within the scope of LTG, which has been described as “a socio-political response to a policy/future problem through reflexive, anticipative, and adaptive action, considering its uncertain, complex, and ambiguous nature that results from unusually long temporal relationships between problem identification, coping interventions, and its intended and unintended effects” (Scheer et al. 2025, p. 17). LTG “brings the ‘when’ into policy-making” and therefore “requires careful attention to issues of temporality, to the management of uncertainty, and to the interplay between the short and the long term” (Scheer et al. 2025, pp. 5–6).

While agreeing with this assessment, in this article I argue that LTG must also attend to the epistemic conditions under which futures are imagined and governed—both in terms of the actors who engage in future-making as well as the knowledge structures that shape which futures are considered legitimate, for questions of temporality and knowledge are inextricably tied to the question of whose future is at stake.

Long-term governance must attend to the epistemic conditions under which futures are imagined and governed.

Temporality and the relational constitution of futures

Recent debates in technology assessment and science and technology studies show that temporality, as an issue of not only LTG, is a complex, multidimensional phenomenon. Beyond the immediate tension between short-term governance and long-term risks, the very conception of the future in relation to the present poses challenges beyond policy. My focus is on the plurality of temporalities and the social practice of futuring, since futures—plural—are always embedded in the immanence of the present: Constructed in the present and evaluated within its constraints (Grunwald 2012, p. 282), a future exists through how it is narrated and as speculation about what must be realized or prevented. Yet imagined futures do not only extend from the present into the uncertain—they shape the present itself through expectations and anticipations that, whether self-fulfilling or unforeseen, structure daily life (Mische 2009; Appadurai 2013). Against the backdrop of long-term ecological transformations, open and indeterminate futures are conceived “as a finite resource” (Nordblad 2021, p. 341): Each decision, each tipping point reached, constricts future openness.

And yet, despite the entanglement of present and future, dominant frameworks often assume a linear temporality, projecting goals and threats onto the future. This assumption, however, is not universal. Gross challenges this view by highlighting how historical ruptures fragment temporal experience. He asks: “What happens to a society that has gone through an apocalyptic event?” (Gross 2014, p. 33), explicitly referring to the ongoing realities for most Native Americans. In other words, what looms ahead for some has long structured the past, present, and future for others. This points not just to a delay in perception, but to the simultaneity of divergent temporalities. Koselleck’s model of multiple times (2003) foregrounds the simultaneity of the nonsimultaneous as a defining feature of temporal complexity, distinguishing between singular events, recurrent structures, and long-term continuities as interwoven temporal layers. Tsing, discussing the arts of living on a damaged planet, advocates abandoning the conceptualization of linear temporality in favor of a “temporal polyphony” (Tsing 2015, p. 11)—to which, with Mische, its “polythetic perception” might be added (Mische 2009, p. 696). This perspective resonates with Koselleck’s model by emphasizing overlapping, entangled temporalities, which highlight how temporal developments remain manifold and plural, appearing absolute only from a singular vantage point.

Following Appadurai, the imagining of futures can be understood as social practices and labor (Appadurai 1996, p. 31), which can be further specified through the concept of techniques of futuring (ToF): “as practices bringing together actors around one or more imagined futures, and through which actors come to share particular orientations for action, to get a grip on the actual acts of ‘futuring’” (Hajer and Pelzer 2018, p. 222). This perspective allows to conceptualize futures—even in their polyphonic and polythetic dimensions—as cultural facts (Appadurai 2013), in the sense that ‘a future’ can always be understood as materially-discursively enacted in social practices (Tutton 2017), emerging from multiple presents and, in turn, shaping them. Futures—and temporality more broadly—are therefore “embedded in a social world of practitioners, meanings and material realities” (Oomen et al. 2022, p. 257) and thus also “deeply entangled with questions of power, knowledge, and control” (Felt 2016, p. 130). Questions of temporality are inextricably linked to the ways in which time is determined and controlled. Ultimately, it is about which actors narrate ‘the future’ and who is included in it.

This poses a challenge for LTG: While it assumes a linear, governable continuum between short- and long-term problems, the approaches discussed here suggest that futures emerge in plural, shaped by diverse social practices. How can LTG engage with this plurality—and are its concepts adequate to account for the polyphony and historical situatedness of futuring? If futures are contested resources that actively shape the present through anticipations, whose futures are being considered? How do different temporalities interact within governance? Furthermore, how can LTG attend to the contingencies and discontinuities that shape temporal experience?

Considering these complex socio-temporal relationships, it is necessary to engage in an “important discussion about inequalities in future-making” (Sand 2019, p. 99)—that is, to examine whose futures are being negotiated: Projecting threats onto the future as yet unrealized, Barad argues, “is to reiterate not only a very particular telling of time and history, but a particularly privileged ‘we,’ complicit in regimes of erasure” (Barad 2019, p. 538).

Agency and the perception of future problems

“Governance requires something to be acted upon—that is, something that is perceived as a public problem (or opportunity) and subsequently enters successfully the political agenda and then the decision-making process” (Scheer et al. 2025, p. 7). The emphasis on perception here is not incidental, as contemporary policy-related research highlights that “individual perceptions are as important as objective facts” (Wood and Doan 2003, p. 641), which aligns with the notion of futures as materially-discursive social practices. Yet, even if discussion and negotiation processes can eventually place a public problem on the political agenda, I wish to take a step back and focus on how—and, crucially, by whom—a public problem can be perceived and determined as such, thus emphasizing the caveat raised by Barad.

If futures—including problems perceived as relevant to them or future-related—are embedded in a social world of practitioners, meanings, and material realities, then the question of who qualifies as a practitioner and how meaning is created becomes crucial. ToFs play a key role here, as they enable actors to coordinate orientations for action around an imagined future. Yet they typically “come with embedded assumptions about who gets to participate, how the future ought to be presented, what the implications of the presented futures are for sociopolitical practices and what types of knowledge are needed” (Oomen et al. 2022, p. 259). ToFs thus favor a shared background of specific practices and procedures, which can be assumed for LTG as well: Sprinz argues for a long-term environmental governance, repeatedly referring to what we know, we study, we contemplate, we cope with, and we may lose (Sprinz 2009). This ‘we,’ framed as a unified actor—even on a “terrain without dispute” (Swyngedouw 2010, p. 217)—becomes the condition of possibility for LTG categories like “prevention” or “recovery” (Sprinz 2009, p. 6). Such anticipatory unity resonates with Mische’s observation that “we may develop a greater clarity about possible futures that are modelled around us and have trouble visualizing [those of others]” (Mische 2009, p. 700), yet simultaneously renders the ‘we’ into an undifferentiated whole (Vergès 2017)—obscuring economic, cultural, and legal distinctions.

That futures “are ‘peopled’ with others whose actions and reactions are seen as intertwined with our own” (Mische 2009, p. 701) is unsurprising—but it leads to a crucial problem: Ambiguity in futuring. Different actors “usually hold different values and meanings towards certain problems and their solutions, and this influences the way they judge events, set priorities, calculate risks, and propose solutions” (Scheer et al. 2025, p. 11). Yet, as Sand diagnoses, futuring does not unfold as different voices articulating differently perceived problems that “compete in the arena of futures” (Sand 2019, p. 101). Rather, ToFs’ normative implications regulate not only whose voices are heard, but who is allowed to articulate something in the first place. Often, “a set of master narratives in which science and technology are staged unambiguously as the solution to a range of social ills” (Macnaghten 2010, p. 32) is presupposed as the shared background against which actors are evaluated, engaging in various activities to have their future(s) heard, let alone realized. Not having a voice, Sand argues, can thus also mean not having a future.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as the dominant science-policy interface on climate change, exemplifies a globally operating institution negotiating policies around an imagined future. However, ongoing critiques highlight IPCC’s marginalization of Indigenous knowledge systems, the neglect of historical and contextual complexities, and the often symbolic rather than substantive participation of local communities—exclusions regarded as structurally embedded in the very framework shaping futures (Ford et al. 2016; Mustonen et al. 2021; Orlove et al. 2023). As Sand suggests, what some perceive as problems might be dismissed as “profane” by others, assumed to either dissolve within a long-term vision or be ultimately deemed unimportant (Sand 2019, p. 100)—an assumption that underscores precisely the privileged ‘we’ that Barad critiques. This framework constitutes the very foundation upon which a ‘we’ is imagined—the tone it sets will shape what ‘we’ know, study, contemplate, cope with, and may lose.

This raises the question of whether LTG can adequately account for the fact that the notion of a unified, capable ‘we’ governing the long term is not a given, but rather constructed through specific frameworks as the discussion here suggests. How can LTG critically engage with competing visions of futures and narratives that systematically favor or marginalize actors in the very process of imagining them? What conceptual resources does it have to address the epistemic conditions under which certain futures become governable while others remain unheard? And how might LTG reflect on its own position in shaping whose futures are heard?

If it is evident that knowledge is required for addressing futures, then in addition to socio-technological and political-theoretical considerations of LTG, a more fundamental epistemic reflection is necessary—one that interrogates what it epistemologically means when voices are not heard.

Epistemic constraints and long-term governance

In the late 1920s, Fleck developed a nuanced account of knowledge as a social and historical process embedded in epistemic frameworks—shaped by historicity, sociality, and materiality (Fleck 1980). [1] Knowledge, he argued, does not emerge from individual actors but within a thought collective: a community in which epistemic labor is divided and ideas circulate in reciprocal exchange. This collective, he suggests, drives the historical development of a particular body of knowledge—“a distinct thought style” (Fleck 1980, p. 55). Ignoring these structuring conditions, he warns, renders epistemic assertions meaningless and reduces epistemology to “mere trifling” (Fleck 1980, p. 59). A thought style he defines “as the readiness for directed perception, with corresponding intellectual and objective processing of what has been perceived. It is characterized by the shared features of the problems that capture the interest of a thought collective, the judgments it considers evident, and the methods it employs as tools of inquiry” (Fleck 1980, p. 130). By inscribing within itself what a ‘we’ deems a legitimate object of knowledge along with the valid practices of recognition and evaluation, the thought style—especially when institutionalized—not only constitutes cognition and knowledge but also dictates what cannot be perceived otherwise.

This directed perception is not merely implicit; it must be internalized. Fleck describes this process as an “apprenticeship” in which modes of thought are “drilled according to traditional patterns” or imposed as a “purely authoritarian suggestion of thought” (Fleck 1980, pp. 66, 136). Once a thought style takes hold, it often persists across generations governed “under a thought constraint, burning dissenters who fail to partake in the collective attunement” (Fleck 1980, p. 130). His critique of modernity’s progress narrative underscores how the thought collective promotes a self-assured ‘we’ that “naively believes” itself to possess the “correct way of thinking,” whereas “what others—the so-called primitives, the ancient, the mentally ill, or children—declare to be true merely appears true to them” (Fleck 1980, p. 69). Within this epistemic order, alternative concepts sound “arbitrary,” their justifications “unconvincing,” and their concerns “irrelevant” (Fleck 1980, p. 143).

These insights into the structuring of knowledge align with the previous considerations on ToFs. If futuring is a collective labor and social practice of perceiving future problems and solutions, Fleck’s concept of a thought style provides a productive outline. The exclusion of certain problems as ‘profane’ or ‘irrelevant’ is not a mere oversight but structurally embedded in a thought style. This highlights that futuring is fundamentally exclusionary—not only in practice, as McCray (2017) notes, but in its epistemic architecture. If ToFs rest on tacit agreements about participation and the legitimacy of knowledge, they can be understood as governed by a particular thought style.

Even though LTG emphasizes deliberation and involvement to accommodate diverse perspectives—“to gain a richer understanding” (Scheer et al. 2025, p. 13)—such polyphony does not emerge spontaneously. A thought collective tends to reinforce its own coherence, seeking to structurally suppress thinking that does not conform to its style. Without actively fostering epistemic dissonance, the collective ‘we’ determines whose voices compete in the arenas of the future and whose voices are deemed irrelevant, reproducing the very epistemic asymmetries that might underlie certain ToFs.

It is no coincidence that Fleck himself employs a vocabulary of force to describe cognition as “the most socially-conditioned activity” (Fleck 1980, p. 58). For him, the collectively anchored thought style inherently contains a potential for violence, both by disciplining internal dissent, and excluding external perspectives in institutionalized knowledge production.

This notion is further articulated in the concept of epistemic violence, which Spivak defines as “a complete overhaul of the episteme” (Spivak 1988, p. 280), a process in which knowledge and lived experience are actively delegitimized and erased. This silencing, she argues, is both epistemic and existential: Under colonial conditions, it materialized in the systematic overwriting of Indigenous cognitive, cultural, and epistemic frameworks, denying colonized populations the ability to perceive and navigate the world through their own conceptual vocabularies. As Jasanoff describes for different contexts, those subjected to epistemic othering are left to place their trust in the promise “that their lives will be bettered through inventions designed elsewhere” (Jasanoff 2016, p. 255). Critical analyses of IPCC assessments or localized LTG practices—such as long-term climate adaptation strategies for the Pacific island state of Kiribati (Klepp 2018)—can be understood in this light.

Feminist epistemology has theorized epistemic violence from the perspective of those subjected to it. It recognizes knowledge production as a social practice in which silencing and the denial of being heard are not accidental but systemic. Fleck only hints at the extent to how members of a thought collective might detect the constraints imposed by their own thought style—he himself serves as an empirical case for such critical reorientation. Ultimately, however, it is precisely those at the epistemic margins—the outsiders, the others—whom Fleck identifies as potential disruptors of the collective’s tightly orchestrated style.

Feminist epistemology has sharpened this analysis by emphasizing that epistemic constraints always extend into the social and political domain. The focus on situatedness and local knowledge elaborates Fleck’s insight into epistemic closure and the potential of silenced voices for renewal, while stressing the need to critically reflect on one’s own thought constraints. At the heart of this argument is the recognition of “a radical historical contingency for all knowledge claims and knowing subjects, [and] a critical practice for recognizing our own ‘semiotic technologies’ for making meanings” (Haraway 1988, p. 579). The challenge, then, is to acknowledge the ways in which a community’s shared assumptions structure its epistemic horizon. If all participants—such as the social actors engaged in futuring—operate within the same conceptual framework, “how are these like-minded people supposed to reveal it?” (Harding 1995, p. 339).

Like Fleck, Harding argues that dominant conceptual frameworks are best exposed from outside their own logic (Harding 1995, p. 342). However, she rejects the idea that only structurally marginalized groups hold such perspectives, thus avoiding essentialism and the illusion of yet another undifferentiated whole. While everyone occupies a determined location in an intersectional matrix, this does not determine their capacity for diverse modes of thinking and perceiving. Instead, acknowledging discord, engaging competing discourses, and resisting the urge to smooth over dissonance, are prerequisites for critiquing and transforming conceptual schemes that shape the arts of living on a damaged planet.

For LTG, emphasizing the perception of public problems as a precondition for action neglects the epistemic prefiguration shaping that perception. How can LTG account for an epistemic architecture that acknowledges that what appears as an open-ended engagement with possible futures is always already shaped by implicit constraints—foregrounding certain concerns while rendering others unthinkable? This is both an ethical issue and a functional limitation: If LTG legitimizes some problems while excluding others, it risks neglecting critical long-term challenges or misjudging their urgency. Similarly, if it promotes diverse voices in futuring, how does it address a dominant thought style that may reinforce rather than disrupt existing asymmetries? And if those at epistemic margins sustain not just polyphony but a counterpoint exposing prevailing narratives as contingent, how does LTG engage with this “creative disruption of imagined futures” (Oomen et al. 2022, p. 257), rather than reproducing its own exclusions?

Conclusion

I have highlighted three interrelated challenges for LTG emerging from the considerations of temporality, collective agency, and epistemic assumptions. First, while LTG often assumes that temporal horizons unfold in a linear, governable progression from short- to long-term problems, the discussion suggests that futures are materially-discursively enacted in social practices, giving rise to a multiplicity of temporalities and ultimately constituting futures as cultural facts. If futures do not exist as discrete endpoints but emerge relationally, then LTG must reconsider how its frameworks structure these dynamics, rather than merely extending the present into a distant horizon. Second, when understood as a social practice, futuring runs the risk of anticipating a ‘we’ that privileges certain voices while marginalizing others. The dominant narratives that might shape LTG not only influence which futures are imagined, but also determine who has the authority to define them. Although LTG seeks to include diverse perspectives, it may inadvertently reproduce exclusions by favoring those whose conceptual frameworks align with prevailing modes of governance. Third, while LTG emphasizes the perception of public problems as a necessary precondition for action, it remains largely unreflective of the epistemic structures that shape such perception. The processes by which issues are recognized as legitimate future problems are guided by underlying thought styles that prefigure what is even possible to anticipate or govern. Taken together, these challenges suggest that LTG may not only fail to recognize critical long-term risks but also sustain the very asymmetries it aims to overcome.

These conditions suggest a rethinking of LTG: Rather than treating the long-term as a universally shared horizon, it must acknowledge that the very framing of future challenges is already shaped by existing power structures. Warren’s framework, by prioritizing diverse voices, historicity, and relationality, serves as a reference point to ensure that LTG does not merely project the present into the future but remains attuned to the plurality of perspectives that shape how futures are imagined and enacted. If LTG is to live up to its ambition of addressing long-term challenges in an inclusive and reflexive way, it must address the reproduction of epistemic asymmetries and conceptual closures. This requires more than the formal inclusion of diverse voices; it needs a fundamental shift in how authority over the future is distributed and how the conditions of futurity itself are constituted.