Responding to the need to make democratic governance more anticipatory, during recent decades parliaments have increasingly made efforts to involve elected legislators directly in addressing future risks and envisioning long-term developments. At the level of general democratic-institutional principles, engaging legislators in national-level foresight is expected to enhance the general legitimacy of future-regarding policymaking almost automatically by broadening the scope of democratic actors involved in policy work. However, even the basic mechanisms through which the impact of legislature-based foresight activities could traverse to policymaking remain largely uncharted and unknown. To develop a preliminary framework for detecting and comparing such mechanisms, we draw from the experiences of the most institutionalised and influential legislature-based foresight unit, the Committee for the Future in the Finnish Eduskunta. We extract three general mechanisms through which parliamentary future committees could make a valuable contribution to national-level strategic foresight: (1) they can improve the quality of future-regarding policymaking by broadening and consolidating national foresight “ecosystems”; (2) they can strengthen the transparency and accountability of the foresight work of political executives; and (3) they can enhance the legitimacy of anticipatory governance by connecting broader democratic publics to foresight work through more inclusive participatory processes.

为了满足使民主治理更具预见性的需要，近几十年来，议会越来越多地努力让民选立法者直接参与应对未来风险和设想长期发展。在一般民主制度原则层面上，通过扩大参与政策工作的民主行动者的范围，让立法者参与国家层面的远见预计将几乎自动增强面向未来的政策制定的总体合法性。然而，即使是基于立法机关的前瞻活动的影响可能影响到政策制定的基本机制，在很大程度上仍然是未知的。为了制定一个检测和比较此类机制的初步框架，我们借鉴了最制度化和最有影响力的立法机构前瞻部门——芬兰教育委员会未来委员会的经验。我们提炼出了三种一般机制，议会未来委员会可以通过这些机制为国家层面的战略远见做出宝贵贡献：（1）它们可以通过扩大和巩固国家远见“生态系统”来提高未来政策制定的质量；（2）可以加强政治行政人员预见工作的透明度和问责制；(3) 它们可以通过更具包容性的参与过程将更广泛的民主公众与预见工作联系起来，从而增强预期治理的合法性。