The Future Potential Index for OECD Countries (2022)

Abstract

This paper presents a new, multidisciplinary concept applicable to social entities called “Future Potential” and introduces a methodology for measuring this concept empirically. Notably, in addition to outlining the concept, it presents a new global index, the “Future Potential Index” (hereinafter, FPI). Positioned at the intersection of philosophy, psychology, sociology, political theory, economics, and geopolitics, along with other fields of social sciences, Future Potential and its empirical metric, the index, should be of interest to both academics and policymakers alike. The concept of Future Potential derives from an effort to capture the key elements of a social entity that determine its potential to continue and possibly flourish in the future. This requires first defining what the entity is, what it means to exist and flourish, and then how to measure it. To address the very first step – defining a social entity – in a way that ensures consistency and facilitates comparability across different contexts, our work on defining Future Potentials and an FPI starts by establishing a fixed normative, analytical, and discursive framework. The explicit definition of such a framework is, to the best of our knowledge, unique to our work and, thus, to the FPI. The question addressed by our work is whether there is a framework that is broad and consistent enough to permit both the definition and the measurement of a social entity such that we can monitor whether it is evolving over time in a direction that may be considered “good” or intentional or both. We show how to do this and then describe the development of the first index that actually does this using real-world data. More specifically, we present here our results for the OECD countries using 2022 data. While the concept and measurement thereof are described in this paper, we hope the initiative will form the basis for future research that utilizes the index and/or approach to address policy questions regarding the development of social entities and institutions perceived as integral parts of a broader society of value to humanity. Alternatively, it may be noted that this approach can be modified and applied to smaller-scale entities – something we discuss briefly below. This paper proceeds as follows. We first present the normative framework, which is centered around the idea of "a good life in a unity of order," emphasizing a harmonious balance of peace, security, attachment, and care (Csák, 2018). We then explain how this architecture suggests key dimensions and metrics that can be measured as indicators of the various aspects of Future Potential. We then discuss how these have been compiled into an index and applied to a range of countries. We close by discussing the latest results as an example of this approach and include thoughts about future directions for the further application of the innovation.