A necessary condition for the effectiveness and sustainability of public policies is, first of all, to agree on a good diagnosis of the problems, to analyze and debate the different alternative scenarios of institutions and public policies that will be able to respond to them and to deepen one or two of these medium-term scenarios.
With the project Asserting the future, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, in partnership with the Institute of Public Policy, intended to make a decisive contribution to the materialization of this condition, mainly through several preparatory sectoral workshops and other activities that culminated in an international conference.
The public policies to be addressed under this project were based on four fundamental subjects:
- Institutions, public finances, and reform of the state;
- Real economy and sustainable development;
- Social policy; and
- Spacial planning and the environment.