Latin America’s Future Public Policy Challenges: A Ten Year Time Horizon

• In Event: Sustainable Urban Policy Challenges in Latin America: A 10 Year Time Horizon

Abstract

This paper provides the background to the panel and identifies the most-likely public-policy challenges and agenda items that policymakers will confront in Latin America 10 years from now. While many of today’s challenges will continue to be salient within the public-policy agenda—the “known knowns”—our goal is to drill down and highlight the most-likely sub-issues and specific policy imperatives and challenges in the medium term (the “known unknowns”). The authors conducted fifty intensive key-informant interviews with senior and experienced individuals from a range of professional settings, including scholars and academics, agency directors, top think-tank analysts, heads of non-governmental organizations, public intellectuals, and senior board members. The paper reports on unstructured, one-on-one “listening sessions” in which respondents have offered their views on the specific but thus far largely latent public-policy issues that they anticipate will need to be addressed looking beyond the status quo ante.

Authors

• Peter M Ward, University of Texas/Austin

• Robert H Wilson, University of Texas at Austin