Horizontal Foresight to Address Societal Challenges in Danish Priority-Setting for Strategic Research

The paper describes the case study on the foresight exercise RESEARCH2015, which is a priori-ty-setting exercise aiming to address societal challenges in strategic research in Denmark. The exercise attempts to achieve its aim through cross-disciplinary deliberation and broad inclusion of societal actors. After a brief introduction to the methodology, the paper will introduce RESEARCH2015. Here the theoretical context of foresight exercises will be shortly introduced and the exercise will be located among other European example of cross-disciplinary priority-setting exercises. In the second and third part RESEARCH2015 will be analysed using the research model developed within the Res-AGorA project. The analysis is divided into two parts, one looking at how RRI in the making is conditioned and the other de facto governance prac-tices. The fourth and last part will draw up lessons for the Res-AGorA project. The case study finds that doing horizontal foresight is a delicate balancing act, where many different factors have to be weighted. While it is clear that RESEARCH2015 creates some constructive interactions between actors, some actors and viewpoints never become part of the core process. The process also has a limited ability to create transformation in the values and behaviours of ac-tors, and therefore only minor long term impact of the process can be identified going beyond the immediate results. Finally the exercise has a strong focus on being instrumental for policy-making, closing down perspectives which are not fitting this perspective. This raises the question whether it is possible to both achieve an impact on policy-making and create an inclusive and creative priority-setting exercise bringing together a variety of perspectives.