Short abstract:

Building on concepts concerning the anticipatory governance (AG) of emerging technologies, the paper explores challenges and limitations brought about by the much-needed attempts at expanding AG to explore opportunities for advancing both sustainable innovations and societal transformations.

Long abstract:

Building on concepts and cases concerning the research on, and practices dedicated to, the anticipatory governance (AG) of new and emerging fields of science and technology, such as nanotechnology and climate engineering, the paper explores some of the challenges and limitations that come along with the much-needed attempts at exploring the opportunities for expanding the capacities of AG to advance both sustainable innovations and societal transformations. The paper’s arguments concern the following key themes:

- First, I will review the initial discussion around technology assessment (TA) and AG, and present the core elements of AG developed in institutional experiments dedicated to facilitating endeavors of TA-based AG.

- Second, I will suggest that advancing the significance of AG requires an assessment of the existing institutional capacities of anticipation in governance, together with an exploration of how the governance of anticipatory capacities might be enhanced.

- Third, I will discuss some ideas to scale up and expand the reach of AG not only as regards emerging and potentially disruptive technologies but also as regards sustainable societal transformations.

- Fourth, I will conclude by presenting a potential selection of divergent case studies to illustrate the massive challenges ahead, for example because of the politics of expectations, knowledge, and practices involved.