Introduction

Present generations often view future people as an outgroup, and people tend to disregard – or misrepresent – the perspectives of outgroups (Cikara et al. 2011; Bloom 2016). Future generations are an especially vulnerable outgroup because future people are not present in today's public sphere to speak for themselves. So how can democratic processes be designed so that the interests of absent outgroups – such as future generations – are adequately considered when collective decisions are made?

Scholars have shown that perspective-taking exercises, which encourage people to see things from the perspective of an outgroup, can be used to encourage people to think more about the potential interests and concerns of future generations. The problem with such exercises is that they are normally directed towards the perspectives of particular individuals or groups, instead of encouraging people to consider diverse perspectives. Nor do perspective-taking exercises encourage people to engage in deliberation over the conflicts of interest or differences that might exist between different groups.

Deliberative forms – such as minipublics (see, e.g., Setälä et al., Chapter 12, this volume) – are designed to bring groups of people with diverse perspectives into contact with each other. Deliberative forums can, in some circumstances, also encourage participants to consider the perspectives of absent groups, such as future people (Kulha et al. 2021; MacKenzie and Caluwaerts 2021). Nevertheless, deliberative forums may fail to give due consideration to the potential interests of future people if no one in those forums acts as a representative of those interests (e.g., Harris 2021).

In this chapter, I argue that this problem can be addressed by combining inclusive deliberative forums with perspective-taking methods that are explicitly future-regarding. This approach can be used to encourage perspective-taking towards future generations while also ensuring that diverse interests both within and between generations are given adequate consideration in decision-making processes.

What is Perspective-Taking?

Bohman (2003, 2012: 82) defines perspectives as views that people hold based on their lived experiences in different social positions. Unlike values or ideologies, knowledge of perspectives is thus based on individual experiences. When we engage in perspective-taking, we try to understand other people's needs and interests, many of which are based on their experiences in specific social positions, such as what it is like to live as a disabled person, a woman or a member of a language minority.