Foresight and long-term policy-making: An analysis of anticipatory boundary work in policy organizations in The Netherlands

•Knowledge is an important driver of public policy.•Knowledge about the future can contribute substantially to futures oriented public policy.•However, knowledge about the future has characteristics that make it problematic for use in policy.•In policy organizations, specialized workers and units of anticipatory boundary workers can improve the fit of foresight and policy.•Our empirical study explains the dilemmas of boundary workers and units and suggests possible repertoires to deal with those dilemmas.

Public policy is founded on analysis and knowledge. However, knowledge – and especially knowledge about the future – is not a self-evident element of public policy-making. This paper conceptualizes the problematic relationship between anticipatory policy-making and anticipatory knowledge. Our study identifies possible key-variables in the linkage between foresight and policy, such as positioning, timing interfaces, professional background, instrument usage, procedures and leadership. We describe the organization and flow of policy and futures knowledge. Furthermore, we generalize these findings toward a theory concluding how ‘goodness of fit’ between knowledge about the future and policy can be achieved, so that the likelihood of informed future-oriented policies might increase.