1. CREATING A PANEL ON SOCIAL PROGRESS

In 2014, the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote: ‘Some of the smartest thinkers on problems at home and around the world are university professors, but most of them just don't matter in today's great debates … I write this in sorrow, for I considered an academic career and deeply admire the wisdom found on university campuses. So, professors, don't cloister yourselves like medieval monks – we need you!’ At that time, a group of academics were working to launch the International Panel on Social Progress, with the aim of preparing a report analysing the current prospects for improving our societies.Footnote ¹ It gathered about 300 researchers from more than 40 countries and from all disciplines of the social sciences, law and philosophy.

The motivation for this new panel was to live up to the responsibility of experts to contribute to public debate about the evolution of the prevailing institutions and the ‘basic structure’ (in Rawls’ terminology) of our society. There already exist many panels of experts about more technical issues (such as the climate, biodiversity, fissile materials, chemical pollution, autonomous weapons, etc.), and many reports on social and economic issues by international organizations (UN organizations, World Bank, OECD, etc.). But none of these give a synthetic assessment of the long-term path of our societies. None dares to ask systemic questions and explore alternative societal architectures. And none of them pieces together all the main socio-economic, political and cultural issues.

Our historical juncture seems ripe for such a reckoning. The 20th century was inflamed by totalitarian ideologies that promised radically novel horizons and either ended up in terrible tragedies, or morphed back into variants of the dominant system. The collapse of the illusions peddled by proponents of these ideologies offers a window of opportunity, in the public consciousness, for exploring more reasonable alternatives that would promote social justice without jeopardizing the achievements obtained by previous generations.

Likewise, academic research in the social sciences has moved away from a purely critical stance and from sterile ideological oppositions, and adopts a more objective attitude in the study of societal mechanisms. It has branched into many specialties and accumulated a corpus that provides a much better understanding of the potential and the limitations of key institutions such as the market, governments, democratic politics and the corporation. Much of this corpus has not yet entered the public debate, where opinion leaders still embrace simplistic versions of pro-market or pro-government doctrines.

Moreover, as the simple ‘capitalism vs. socialism’ opposition that defined the 20th century was receding, new societal challenges emerged in the public mind. Issues surrounding race and ethnicity, multiculturalism, globalization, cyber-connection, diversity of gender and sexual orientation, religious difference and large-scale migration divide populations at least as sharply as wealth and income inequalities. Academic studies of these issues deserve to be better known and should be able to elevate the level of debate; they can also offer ideas for promoting tolerance and more inclusive forms of identity.

Given the topic and motivation of this report, one might worry that agreement would be hard to obtain between multiple authors from different disciplines, cultural backgrounds and schools of thought. One might also worry that such a report would surreptitiously promote value judgements and convey implicit recommendations. But, rather than adopting the ‘policy-relevant, but not policy-prescriptive’ mantra of many panels and expert groups, the panel adopted the principle that disagreements should be reflected in the report, through acknowledgements of different perspectives and views, and that recommendations should be provided but tied to specific goals or openly declared values. Prescriptions that are explicitly conditional on certain values and goals leave ample room for disagreement to the actors who do not share those values and goals. Each chapter has been written by a team of authors and co-authorship was clustered by chapters, leaving each team with substantial freedom to choose its focus on particular conceptions of social progress and on particular academic approaches.

2. HOPE AND ALARM

The general thread of the report is that considerable progress has occurred in recent decades, placing humanity at a peak of possibilities while, due to an accumulation of challenges and threats, we are simultaneously approaching an abyss. Standards of living, including health and longevity, have been increasing in most parts of the world, and democratic institutions have been spreading. In addition, there is a slow but long-term trend toward gender equality and toward greater tolerance and acceptance of diversity in ethnicity, culture, religion, sexual orientation and family forms. None of this is linear and automatic, and setbacks and backlash do occur, but the long trend seems to be toward greater prosperity and inclusiveness.

However, in the coming decades, a transition to a more inclusive and more sustainable development model is necessary to ward off looming catastrophes. While inequality between countries has been decreasing overall, some parts of the world are not catching up and, plagued with poverty and instability, are the theatres of increasing violence. Inequality within countries has followed diverse trends in various regions, with dramatic concentration of wealth and power in some of them. In addition, globalization undermines national politics as governments often appear powerless in the face of global economic forces. All this fosters political instability and the emergence of populist, nationalist and extremist tendencies and the rise of inter-religious and ethnic tensions. Such political instability can quickly translate into breakdowns of international cooperation and exacerbate economic and geopolitical conflicts. In addition to these threats to peace and democracy, the environment is under severe stress on various fronts, necessitating serious reforms in economic management and in production and consumption patterns. Expansion of human habitat, resource predation, pollution and greenhouse gases are leading us directly into major crises, with several early warnings already appearing.

Confronting these threats, the general message of the report is that policy is not powerless and the diversity of pathways observed in the world actually proves that good policies and institutions can work toward social cohesion and curb inequalities. Similarly, the preservation of the environment is possible with suitable investments and incentives, under a regime of cooperation to manage the global commons. However, whether humanity will be able to seize these opportunities and address the upcoming challenges will depend on the emergence of social actors and movements confronting the status quo. The report does not come to precise conclusions about the identity of these actors of future progress, and this seems an important message in itself: while possible pathways to social progress and sustainability are not too difficult to delineate, it is not obvious what forces can work to realize them. Rather than a monolithic movement, it appears more likely that fluid coalitions of actors (political movements, business groups and philanthropists, associations and NGOs, groups of workers and minorities, online activists) will push certain causes in a decentralized and uncoordinated fashion.

3. THE FACETS OF SOCIAL COHESION

The report explores the many aspects of social progress, starting with a list of values and principles that can serve to define social progress. These include: equal dignity, basic rights, democracy, the rule of law, pluralism, well-being, freedom, non-alienation, solidarity, esteem and recognition, cultural goods, environmental values, distributive justice, transparency and accountability. The list is ecumenical but nevertheless in opposition to authoritarian and exclusionary views that put women and certain minority groups below others, and which still prevail in some social groups around the world. The report also notes that, for important cultures and thinkers, it is morally reasonable to consider animals and even all living beings as part of a greater moral community.

On the socio-economic front, the report emphasizes the successes of policies that curb inequalities via interventions not only post-market (i.e. standard redistribution), but also pre-market and in-market, empowering individuals by endowing them with skills and good health, as well as bargaining rights and decent contracts. It sees no sign of labour disappearing under the automation wave, but the upcoming reshuffling of jobs will be disruptive for many workers, and requires ambitious flexicurity policies. It articulates the coherence of the Scandinavian model, which combines open markets and high innovation rates with centralized bargaining and universal safety nets. It argues for strategies of development based on equality, since a combination of wage compression (i.e. moderation of wage gaps between jobs and industries), universal welfare programmes, and asset redistribution can accelerate the spread of innovation, empower workers and promote growth and social mobility. It also discusses profit-sharing and cooperative forms of production and argues for reforms of the mission and the governance of corporations that would better take account of the interests of their numerous stakeholders.

On the political front, the report warns against growing corporate political power and it emphasizes the interdependence between social equality and thriving democratic institutions. It celebrates the richness of democratic innovations, especially the many participatory formulas experimented with in Latin America which are now spreading across the world, while emphasizing that participation must be carefully implemented in order to avoid its capture by elite citizens and to ensure the inclusion of minorities. It scrutinizes the crucial role of the media (and social media) system and argues that it should be treated as a public good, with strong democratic monitoring in order to preserve both its independence from government and business influence and the quality of its contents. It examines the complex architecture of global governance mechanisms, in which nation-states and supra-national organizations, but also transnational business, interact in constantly evolving ways. It observes that growing protections for international investors have been recognized as too constraining for domestic social and environmental policies. It notes that the global governance system is still dominated by the richest countries and that international organizations struggle to become more independent from this unbalanced power structure, more accountable, more influential, and more receptive to the needs and perceptions of their worldwide constituency.

On the cultural front, the report describes how we are getting out of a modernization perspective according to which society has been advancing toward individualization and rationalization since the Enlightenment. Instead, a more complex view of the virtues of and problems with both individualization and traditional community life is emerging. It suggests how solidarity and belonging can be promoted through an unalienated perspective on life that gives the collective, in its various concrete embodiments, its proper value.

Similarly, the question of identity formation, now central in debates about political instabilities in many parts of the world, has to be seen in the light of the diversely progressive and regressive tendencies of various types of identities and identity movements. The report analyses how religious groups play diverse roles regarding aspects of social progress such as welfare support, multi-ethnic harmony, gender equality, democracy and environmental stewardship. It argues that, for social and political institutions, engaging in critical assessment and seeking constructive partnerships with religious groups is preferable to either confrontational or enmeshed relations.

The report carefully scrutinizes the evolution of family structures and the interaction between them, public policy and institutions, arguing that the pluralization of family forms and improving gender equality remain very much a work in progress and that welfare programmes can play a crucial role in fostering respect and equality within and between families. Health and education trends and policies are also examined in depth from the perspective of how they crucially affect human lives not just through economic opportunities but in all moral, civic and social aspects. Health and education policies, well conceived, can go a long way toward social progress.

4. THE NEXT SYSTEM

Equipped with its ecumenical notion of social progress and with its analysis of trends and opportunities in the various components of the social fabric, does the report offer a perspective of where our social system is heading? It argues in favour of a view allowing not only for multiple possible futures, but also for multiple pathways in different parts of the world, corresponding to different cultures and worldviews, different approaches to social cohesion and different organizational forms. For instance, the Scandinavian model may be easier to export to other parts of the world than is usually thought, but it is not the only socially progressive possibility and more decentralized forms of democratizing the economy can be experimented with. Many forms of participatory democracy can be used to revitalize national and local politics, and various types of regional and international cooperation, with diverse degrees of integration, can be developed.

What emerges clearly from the report is that it is possible to realistically envision societies with greater levels of democratic decision-making and lower inequalities in status, power and resources, without having to imagine radically new institutions. Suitable regulations of markets and private decisions, accompanied by participatory mechanisms democratizing the relevant economic, social and political institutions, would suffice to substantially enhance social equality. It is less obvious that simple institutional reforms can similarly promote social feelings of respect and solidarity between people of different sexual orientations and across ethnic and religious divides, but the report notes how public policy can effectively promote gender equality, and how legislation can influence attitudes about race and sexual orientation.

The report concludes with reflections about the role of experts and social scientists in promoting social progress. It outlines the pitfalls of technocracy and similar unholy alliances between expertise and vested interests, and suggests that experts should consciously think of their contribution as a component of the democratic debate. This is, indeed, how the authors of the report would like to see their contribution received.