The Psychology of Future-Proofing Public Sector Reform

Democracy is under attack in Germany and across Europe – from outside and within, and even from what once was its principal protective power, the United States. The societal response: strengthen German and European resilience, our democracies’ capacity to withstand shocks. State reform will be essential to undergird this push for resilience. But how can we ensure successful reform and a resilient democratic system? 

Resilience revolves around how people or systems absorb change. For many, the term evokes the image of a fortress: shielding vulnerabilities behind thick walls, protected by a moat and impossible to conquer. Some experience interactions with the German state as similarly rigid – and not without reason. German law and order is based in the meticulous adherence to rules and regulations, intended to create reliability. 

The resilience needed today is adaptive, not rigid. A more fitting metaphor would be chewing gum: flexible, sticky and capable of adapting to new circumstances at any time without losing its substance – in this case, its democratic essence. We need the proverbial gum to stick so firmly to the pavement that even an apocalypse could not dislodge it.

Compared to more flexible bureaucracies, Germany’s administration is relatively slow to react and adapt. This is increasingly becoming a liability, as the rules-based order is losing authority and anti-democratic forces are deploying a new kind of statecraft, using unconventional means to gain political power and intimidate us.

Russian disinformation as well as extremist propaganda rely on overload, overstimulation and ambiguities to push democratic systems onto the defensive and to their limits of capacity. Cornered, democracies increasingly fight with inadequate and outdated tools, often failing to adapt proactively to this new reality. They lose sight of opportunities – even the ones that arise from crises and challenges. Simultaneously, they overlook new risks and dangers.

So, how can we generate effective positive change when polarization tactics and pressure for change incite fear? At first glance, reform and change sound like they would entail more effort; they also feel like the very essence of what has brought us security and prosperity is put at risk. Psychology helps explain why: stress and fear amplify the ​“status quo bias,” our inherent tendency to prefer the familiar over the new (read: uncertain). When our brains are overloaded, we revert to default settings; we rely on processes we know best, retreat into familiar environments and fall back on tried-and-true routines. This creates a feeling of regaining control and an illusion of stability.

This is precisely where strategic foresight comes in. Strategic foresight, understood and used as a form of applied psychology aimed at counteracting cognitive biases, faulty reasoning and paralyzing fear of change, can be used as a counterstrategy. To help achieve adaptive resilience, we need a competent, proactive approach to thinking about the future that opens up possibilities and shows that change is both necessary and achievable. Drawing on scientific principles of psychology, this approach connects systemic thinking about the state with the necessary institutional changes in administrative practice. The aim: for desirable and realistic change to foster a sense of agency, rather than triggering fear. 

Strategic foresight does not attempt to precisely predict the future. Rather, it provides methods to systematically analyze possible futures and underlying assumptions to make better decisions in the here and now. What this means in practice is that state reform initiatives can deliberately develop scenarios that avoid both the pitfalls of unrealistic wishful thinking and paralyzing fatalism. In the spirit of cognitive reframing, such scenarios make realistic future images conceivable. This helps to clearly identify uncertainties and make them more manageable.

Moreover, the strategic elements of foresight can strengthen self-efficacy by focusing the development of concrete and realistic courses of action on challenges that can actually be influenced – and on one’s own scope for action. This reduces diffuse anxieties and undercuts the tactics of overload employed by anti-democratic actors.

Administrative principles of the past are not much more appropriate than the automatic reflexes of the human brain when safeguarding democracy and confronting the uncertainties of complex hybrid threats in the twenty-first century. By developing scenarios and visions, and by applying methods such as ​“back-casting” or simulations, foresight can uncover and test assumptions, reveal blind spots and distinguish between (un)desirable and plausible developments. It makes future images explicit and renders futures – despite all their uncertainty – tangible and shapeable.

A shorter, German-language version of this article was first published by Re:form on February 12, 2026.