Intergenerational institutions and political short-termism

In response to problems of political short-termism and time inconsistency, over the last decades a diversity of institutional reforms have been enacted and proposals have been advanced to enlarge the time horizon of political decisions, improve their time consistency, and better take into account the interests of future generations. This paper is a contribution to the normative analysis of such institutions. It mainly aims at examining their ability to cope with the plurality of determinants of short-termism and time inconsistency. To this aim, and after an introduction, I present the intertemporal problems that these institutions seek to address. A sample of such institutions is displayed next. They are organized by the types of mechanisms they employ as well as by their degree of independence, competencies, types of powers, and the extent of the mandate to which they are subject. Finally, the institutions previously introduced are assessed by their ability to cope with the motivational, epistemic, and institutional determinants of such problems.