Reflections from the 21st ParlAmericas Plenary Assembly
At the recent 21st ParlAmericas Plenary Assembly and 9th Gathering of the Open Parliament Network in Montevideo, Uruguay, SOIF worked alongside leaders from across the Americas and the Caribbean to explore one of the most pressing questions of our time: How can parliaments become institutions fit for the future?
The three-day gathering last 27-29 May brought together parliamentarians, experts, and institutional partners around the theme “Legislating for the Future”, at a moment when political trust is eroding, youth disenchantment is growing, and the effects of climate change, technological disruption, and demographic transitions are converging at unprecedented speed.
Parliaments’ roles in anticipatory governance
In Session 1, focussed on the intersection of anticipatory governance and open parliament, SOIF shared a perspective grounded in our Transformative Foresight Governance prism—which emphasises intergenerational fairness as a vital narrative and design principle for institutional transformation. Parliaments, we argued, occupy a unique intersection of three roles:
- As institutions, they can transform structures and practices through future-proofing laws, budgets, and oversight using foresight tools and citizen-led methods.
- As spaces of political leadership, they hold responsibility for making decisions today that are fair to future generations.
- As intermediaries between citizens and the state, they must renew their bonds by opening future-oriented participatory processes, especially to younger and disenfranchised voices.
SOIF emphasised that parliaments are not only policy-shaping engines—they can become democratic accelerators, renewing how societies imagine and deliberate on their futures.
Applying the Three Horizons framework
In Session 6, SOIF delivered the closing synthesis of the conversations, inviting participants to reflect on the event’s key insights through the Three Horizons framework:
- Horizon 1, the present, is marked by widespread institutional fatigue and citizen frustration.
- Horizon 3, the desired future, imagines parliaments as living ágoras (public squares for dialogue and civic life), embodying trust, regeneration, and intergenerational fairness.
- Horizon 2, the transition, begins with experimentation: intergenerational dialogues, pilot foresight processes, cross-party coalitions, and renewed partnerships with civil society and technical teams, before institutionalisation.
SOIF challenged parliamentarians to take concrete first steps—from convening diverse futures-oriented deliberative spaces to identifying foresight allies within their national and regional ecosystems. The message was clear: the legitimacy to legislate for the long-term cannot be confined to election cycles. It must be grounded in the voices of citizens—and in particular, the generations who will live with the consequences.
As we look ahead, SOIF remains committed to supporting regional and global efforts to embed anticipatory governance in public life. The Montevideo gathering marks not an endpoint, but a launchpad—for aligned action across parliaments, institutions, and communities.
This spirit is captured in the final Declaration, which reaffirms anticipatory governance, intergenerational fairness, and citizen participation as pillars of democratic renewal. We look forward to deepening our collaboration with ParlAmericas, UNDP, ECLAC, and other partners to help activate these commitments—and to co-create forward-looking, inclusive, and action-oriented parliamentary ecosystems across Latin America and the Caribbean.