EISA 2026 section "Imagining the future(s) of war: The logics and politics of foresight and threat anticipation in international security"
Eric Sangar
Dear all,
Together with my colleague Daniel Møller Ølgaard, I will be coordinating a section on the politics and logics of threat anticipation at the next EISA conference in Lisbon. The idea behind this section is not so much to study the content of these anticipations and their ‘accuracy’ but rather to analyse how and why certain anticipations are produced rather than others, how they circulate, what ‘side effects’ they have, and what they do to the organisations that produce them and the audiences that receive them.
With this in mind, we would be particularly interested in conceptual and theoretical reflections and comparative studies. The full text of the call, with a list of potential panels, can be found at the end of this message.
You have until 19 February to submit a panel or paper proposal here:
https://eisa-net.org/pec-2026/
We would be delighted to receive a large number of proposals from a variety of epistemological and empirical backgrounds.
Please feel free to share this invitation with other colleagues and networks that might be interested.
Best wishes
Eric Sangar
Imagining the future(s) of war: The logics and politics of foresight and threat anticipation in international security
Proposed theme and rationale:
In an age of climate crisis, resurging great power competition, proliferating authoritarian politics, as well as rapidly changing technologies, societal and institutional demand for accurate and timely threat foresight and anticipation is higher than ever. Since the second half of the 20th century, this growing demand has been accompanied by a professionalisation and a diversification of actors participating efforts to imagine and detect future risks and threats, including think tanks, NGOs, consultants, and artists, as well as the multiplication of anticipation and forecasting methods, including the use of big data and LLMs, design fiction, and open-source intelligence. Examples of such initiatives are early-warning systems in foreign ministries and international institutions, projects to imagine climate change or future way using science-fiction narratives, and scenario planning in ministries and crisis management agencies.
Despite a proliferating field of academic research in this field, including both positivist and post-positivist approaches, this scholarship has remained fragmented and lacks a thorough conceptualisation of the multiple causalities and logics of action that could help understand how anticipation efforts, beyond their official purpose, actually modify international and domestic politics. The aim of this section is therefore to promote a more systematic, comparative approach to the study of foresight and threat anticipation, based on three interrelated questions: 1) what are the organizational motives and strategies of threat anticipation? 2) what are the logics of anticipation practices and interaction with other actors potentially competing in this field? and 3) what impact does anticipation practices actually have on decision-makers, societies, but also the human and non-human objects of threat anticipation?
To this end, the section invites panels and papers that can relate to at least one of these fundamental questions from a theoretical and/or empirical perspective. We are interested in both rationalist and reflectivist approaches and would particularly welcome efforts to build bridges between these epistemological positions. Given the underrepresentation of female and non-binary scholars in this field of study, and the epistemic importance of including their perspectives, we particularly encourage submissions from these groups.
Tentative list of possible panels:
- Fiction and foresight: Why do artists and institutions collaborate to anticipate future threats?
This panel could involve members of an informal research network interested in how science-fiction authors become involved in institutional and public threat anticipation project, such as the Red Team project of the French army
- The bureaucratic logics of threat anticipation and early warning systems
This panel could examine the often ill-fated efforts of ministries, armies, and international organizations to build and implement “early warning systems” and similar initiatives. How do internal organizational logics, agendas, and bureaucratic interests influence the design and outcome of such initiatives?
- Theoretical perspectives on threat anticipation
In comparison to other temporal phenomena of international politics, collective memory and historical IR, the politics of anticipation lack a stock of discernible theoretical propositions. Which theoretical perspectives, including field theory, securitization, and organisational sociology, could provide components for future theories of threat anticipation? Are there arguments that could be “imported” from theoretical arguments related to collective memory, path dependency, or temporality?
- Methods of understanding the politics of anticipation
Arguably, there is no methodology to measure the ‘truthfulness’ of anticipation. But which methods are useful to understand the actual politics of anticipation and their outcome? Can scholars borrow methodological clues from other sub-fields, such as collective memory? How to engage in comparative research of anticipation politics, which is still largely missing in the existing literature?
- Is there a Cassandra effect? The institutional reception of academic forecasting
This panel could examine how academic knowledge and expertise on future threats is handled by political and military institutions, especially in a context of growing public resentment against independent and critical academic research. Which experts are listened to, which others are ignored? How to make sense of the institutional filtering of the plurality of academic voices with regards the future of international relations?
Eric Sangar
Dear all,
As a reminder, Daniel Møller Ølgaard and I are coordinating a section on the politics and logics of threat anticipation for the next EISA conference in Lisbon.
You have until 19 February to submit a panel or paper proposal here:
https://eisa-net.org/pec-2026/
We would be delighted to receive a large number of proposals from a variety of epistemological and empirical backgrounds.
Please feel free to share this invitation with other colleagues and networks that might be interested.
Imagining the future(s) of war: The logics and politics of foresight and threat anticipation in international security
Proposed theme and rationale:
In an age of climate crisis, resurging great power competition, proliferating authoritarian politics, as well as rapidly changing technologies, societal and institutional demand for accurate and timely threat foresight and anticipation is higher than ever. Since the second half of the 20th century, this growing demand has been accompanied by a professionalisation and a diversification of actors participating efforts to imagine and detect future risks and threats, including think tanks, NGOs, consultants, and artists, as well as the multiplication of anticipation and forecasting methods, including the use of big data and LLMs, design fiction, and open-source intelligence. Examples of such initiatives are early-warning systems in foreign ministries and international institutions, projects to imagine climate change or future way using science-fiction narratives, and scenario planning in ministries and crisis management agencies.
Despite a proliferating field of academic research in this field, including both positivist and post-positivist approaches, this scholarship has remained fragmented and lacks a thorough conceptualisation of the multiple causalities and logics of action that could help understand how anticipation efforts, beyond their official purpose, actually modify international and domestic politics. The aim of this section is therefore to promote a more systematic, comparative approach to the study of foresight and threat anticipation, based on three interrelated questions: 1) what are the organizational motives and strategies of threat anticipation? 2) what are the logics of anticipation practices and interaction with other actors potentially competing in this field? and 3) what impact does anticipation practices actually have on decision-makers, societies, but also the human and non-human objects of threat anticipation?
To this end, the section invites panels and papers that can relate to at least one of these fundamental questions from a theoretical and/or empirical perspective. We are interested in both rationalist and reflectivist approaches and would particularly welcome efforts to build bridges between these epistemological positions. Given the underrepresentation of female and non-binary scholars in this field of study, and the epistemic importance of including their perspectives, we particularly encourage submissions from these groups.
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Dr Eric SANGAR
Maître de conférences HDR en science politique / Associate Professor in Political Science
Responsable de la Majeure / Convenor of the MA programme Stratégie, Intelligence économique, Gestion des Risques (SIGR)
Chercheur au / member of the research centre CERAPS, Université de Lille
Sciences Po Lille
Bureau 4.11
9 rue Angellier
59000 Lille
France
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