This book is about governing well for the future It investigates the nature of and the conditions for prudent long term democratic governance in a dynamic complex and uncertain world the reasons why such governance is politically challenging and how such challenges can best be tackled In particular it addresses the problem of short termism or a presentist bias in policy making that is the risk of governments placing undue weight on near term considerations at the expense of a society s overall long term welfare As such the book traverses both normative and empirical issues The approach is primarily qualitative rather than quantitative