Governing long problems

Your recent book Long Problems: Climate Change and the Challenge of Governing across Time (Princeton University Press, 2024) examines the overlooked temporal dimensions of global problems. What are long problems and why are they so difficult to govern globally?

Long problems are those whose cause and effect span more than one human generation. For example, a good portion of the carbon dioxide that was released from the first coal we burned to power the Industrial Revolution is still up in the atmosphere causing climate change today. Similarly, the carbon we emit today will drive further changes in the climate our children, grandchildren, and dozens of generations to come will live in. Beyond climate, societies face scores of long problems such as sustaining pension systems, maintaining infrastructure, or addressing demographic shifts.

Long problems have always vexed society. But they are arguably more important now than in the past because human civilization is pushing up against planetary boundaries that operate on much different timescales, and because technology allows us to both understand future effects and past causes more accurately while also increasing our ability to have tremendous effects on the future.

Long problems are hard problems because they do not match the timescales in which our politics operate. I argue that the political economy of addressing these kinds of problems runs against three main challenges, which I term: shadow interests, institutional lag, and the early action paradox. Consider each in turn.

First, it is those who are negatively affected by a problem who often drive political change. But if a problem’s effects lay in the future, then the people affected by them cannot wield influence in the present. They do not exist yet.  Their interests can only be glimpsed as shadows. They depend entirely on people in the present to interpret what they want and to advocate for them. This means that perhaps the most common vector for “solutions” to a given problem to emerge is structurally muted.

Second, long problems allow for mismatches to grow between problems and the laws, policies, organizations, or other institutions we create to address them. To have an effect, such institutions must be “sticky.” But as time goes on, institutions often struggle to adapt even as problems develop and change. This creates a gap between problem and solution, an institutional lag, that shorter problems do not have to contend with to the same degree.

Finally, perhaps the most difficult political challenge long problems present is the early action paradox. By definition, long problems require action before their effects are felt. But that means that they inherently suffer from both uncertainty and low salience, both “kisses of death” in politics. Under these conditions, political actors opposed to taking action naturally thrive.

In short, long problems are important problems, but also hard problems.

Looking more specifically at the climate crisis, how does the focus on time help better understand the politics of climate change and the struggles our multilateral institutions face in addressing it?

Climate change is a long problem par excellence. The three barriers I write about are vividly on display in international climate politics. First, the interests of those affected are vastly underweighted in decision-making and in political power. Second, UN institutions have struggled to keep pace with the problem, for example, they have never updated the original 1992 definition of industrialized countries, and have been very slow to move from the mitigation-focused approach to also embrace adaptation, loss and damage, etc. Finally, at all scales, challenges of uncertainty and low salience hold back more ambitious action and enable blatant obstruction by high carbon interest groups.

While these challenges are formidable, thinking about climate change as a long problem also opens the door to solutions, not least because it encourages us to think about institutions as a variable, not a fixed parameter. Consider how much political institutions have changed since the first carbon was burned to power the first trains or factories. Now consider how much more they will change over the next centuries as climate change proceeds. Those changes could create more farsighted governments better able to tackle long problems. Or they could drive more reactive solutions that prioritize short-term protection over long-term welfare. This choice is not predetermined. It depends on our agency. For this reason an implication of my analysis is to advocate for an “institutional agenda” on climate change. We cannot just bemoan the lack of political will to tackle climate change and other long problems. We need to create political systems that are better designed to address these kinds of challenges, just as we have created political system throughout history to respond to new needs and priorities.

Your book does not only explore long problems but also suggests tools and strategies to allow policymakers to better address them. What are your main suggestions for the multilateral system and international organizations to improve their efforts to solve long-term problems like climate change?

The most important message from my book is not that long problems are hard, it’s that they can be addressed. Indeed, across the world we see governments adopting dozens and dozens of tools and strategies that attack the three challenges I mentioned above. Some of these examples are quite innovative, like having commissioners for future generations or similar representatives in the policymaking process, like in Wales, or legislative committees that perform a similar function, like in Finland or Kenya. But many of the most successful examples are much more commonplace. For example, we often delegate long-term policy goals to “trustee” institutions, like central banks or courts, that have a degree of insulation from short-term pressures. Every government in the world that wants to borrow from capital markets has some kind of relatively independent office that assesses the future fiscal impact of government policies. There is no reason why this critical function could not be extended to climate change or other long problems.

The key point is that, while solutions abound, there are no silver bullets. No single tool or strategy can overcome the fundamental challenges of long problems. But packages of these kinds of ‘solutions’ can make a material difference in how we manage long problems. For a world facing centuries of climate change, amongst other challenges both present and future, understanding long problems and their solutions is essential for effective policymaking.