European Policy Analysis Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2016 | Page 159

European Policy Analysis

program or activity works reasonably well
at one place or time but not at the other.
It aggregates results but not rationales”
(Pollitt 2008, 12). In their study on obesity,
Felt and colleagues show that the “obesity
epidemic” has become an international
issue in politics as soon as comparative
indicators suggested that developments
observed in countries such as the United
States form an epidemiological trajectory
that could in principle be transposed into
other national contexts, “and thus reveal
how obesity will rise and spread” (Felt et
al. 2014, 8). More importantly, based on
biomedical models these epidemiological
trajectories have also been downscaled to
the level of individual life cycles: Being
overweight in childhood is framed as an
indicator of future health problems and,
in turn, an issue of responsibility toward
the collective. In the case of obesity,
synchronizing the past of both collectives
and individuals is done by imposing “a
specific version of obesity that is mainly
performed through numbers. […]
But a closer analysis of our two sets of
materials has revealed how beneath the
seeming consensus of what obesity is lies
a complex multiplicity of different stories
and accounts that constitutes multiple
versions of this seemingly singular
object” (Felt et al. 2014, 15). Downscaling
evidence-based
comparisons
has
consequences: With the spread of health
measurements, credit classifications, or
other techniques of analyzing behavior
based on big data, the temporal order
of synchronized pasts has become both
a universal and highly individualized
phenomenon (Fourcade and Healy 2013;
Pasquale 2015).

B. Extending the present

A combination of complex
problems and evidence-based policies has
caused what Helga Nowotny describes as
the “extended present” (Nowotny 1994;
Pollitt 2008, 61). For decades, societal
progress seemed to promise an open
horizon, fuelling social expectations
and aspirations with ideas of continuous
growth, technological advancement, and
social wellbeing. While it may never have
been uncontroversial, this time frame of
an open-ended and, in principle, better
future has finally lost its appeal. Confronted
with problems such as global warming,
food insecurities, toxic waste, or financial
risks, the future has become a dark
place, characterized by discontinuities,
unexpected events, and large-scale effects
disturbing whatever kind of equilibrium
may have existed before. It is, however,
not alone this dystopian vision but the
more recent refinement and invention
of “chronotechnologies” that is putting
enormous pressure on the present.
Calculative and computational methods
of modeling the unexpected have gained
in relevance. While former models were
based on linear extrapolations, new
simulative evidence points to future
large-scale irregularities and deviations
resulting from the synthetic interaction
of small events (Gramelsberger 2010;
Nowotny 1989, 63). With the potential to
predict future catastrophes, the pressure
to develop solutions in the present
increases. Solutions need to be found now:
“The future has become more realistic,
not least because the horizon of planning
has been extended. […] The invocation of
the future in the name of which political
action was justified for a long time had to
be reduced and at least partly transferred

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