Rethinking how we study long-term governance
CAMELOT starts from a simple observation: we do not yet have a coherent way to understand how societies can govern risks that unfold across decades or centuries.
Existing research offers important insights—on institutions, decision-making, risk, and futures—but remains fragmented across disciplines. CAMELOT brings these strands together to develop a systematic, empirically grounded theory of long-term governance capacities. Rather than focusing only on policies or institutions, the project examines the capacities that make long-term governance possible—across individuals, organizations, and systems.
A focus on capacities
We define governance capacities as the abilities that enable actors to achieve governance goals. In the context of long-term challenges, three interdependent dimensions are central:
- Learning and meaning-making about complex, long-term change
- Risk assessment and valuation of uncertain futures
- Agency and planning—the ability to act in the present to drive long term trajectories of change
These capacities operate across scales—from individual policymakers to institutions and governance systems—and shape whether and how decisions are made, justified, and implemented.
Imagination as a core mechanism
A central contribution of CAMELOT is to position imagination as a key enabling capacity. Here, imagination is not understood as speculation or creativity alone. It refers to the interdependent cognitive and social processes through which people construct possible futures, interpret their meaning and desirability, and connect those futures to present decisions.
In this sense, imagination underpins learning, risk perception, and agency. It is a precondition for anticipating and governing long-term change.
This perspective opens new possibilities for studying governance empirically, linking cognitive processes with institutional outcomes.
From theory to empirical testing
CAMELOT combines theory development with two complementary empirical strategies.
1. Comparing engagement methods
The project systematically evaluates how different forms of science–policy–society interaction affect long-term governance capacities.
These include, for example:
- Scientific reports and assessments (like this IPCC assessment report)
- News and media content (like this CarbonBrief explainer of AMOC)
- Participatory scenario processes (like CARE practices in this project)
- Storytelling and climate fiction (like any of these wonderful books)
By comparing these approaches under controlled conditions, CAMELOT identifies which methods—and which specific features of these methods—are most effective in fostering long-term thinking and action.
2. Designing and testing new approaches
Building on these insights, the project develops an innovative science–policy engagement exercise tailored to climate governance. This approach combines scientific models and impact narratives, role-play and interactive learning, and future-oriented storytelling.
The exercise is implemented with policymakers across governance levels—from local to international—to study how such interventions shape their understanding of long-term risks and their capacity to act on them.
Climate tipping points as a test case
All empirical work is anchored in the governance of climate tipping points. These phenomena—such as the potential collapse of major ocean circulation systems—represent a particularly demanding case for governance: they are non-linear and deeply uncertain. Their impacts unfold over long time horizons. They challenge existing policy frameworks. This makes them an ideal lens for studying how long-term governance capacities can be developed and applied in practice.
An iterative and interdisciplinary design
CAMELOT is organized in four closely connected work streams:
- Theory development, building the conceptual framework
- Experimental comparison of engagement methods
- Design and implementation of policy-focused interventions
- Analysis of longer-term impacts and feedback into theory
The project is deliberately iterative: theoretical insights guide empirical work, and empirical findings continuously refine the theory.
What this approach makes possible
By integrating theory, experimentation, and real-world engagement, CAMELOT aims to: advance fundamental understanding of long-term governance and identify effective methods for building future-oriented capacities that can inform the design of governance processes and institutions.