Compare methods

	Anticipatory Governance Analysis	Multi-Level Perspective on Transitions
Field	Science Technology Studies	Science Technology Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2008	2002
Originator	David H. Guston, Daniel Barben, Erik Fisher, Cynthia Selin	Frank W. Geels (building on Arie Rip and René Kemp)
Type	Governance framework and analytic approach for emerging technologies	Conceptual framework and analytic method for sociotechnical change
Seminal source	Guston, D. H. (2014). Understanding 'anticipatory governance'. Social Studies of Science, 44(2), 218-242.	Geels, F. W. (2002). Technological transitions as evolutionary reconfiguration processes: a multi-level perspective and a case-study. Research Policy, 31(8-9), 1257-1274.
Aliases	Anticipatory governance framework, Foresight-engagement-integration analysis, Reflexive technology governance	MLP, Multi-level perspective framework, Sociotechnical transitions analysis
Related	4	4
Summary	Anticipatory governance is a framework for steering emerging technologies—nanotechnology, synthetic biology, AI—while their trajectories are still open, rather than waiting to react to harms after they have hardened. Developed by David Guston and colleagues at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University, it defines anticipatory governance as a broad societal capacity, distributed across the research enterprise and the public, built from three intertwined components: foresight, public engagement, and integration. The aim is not to predict the future but to build the reflexive capacity to imagine plausible futures and act on them wisely in the present.	The Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) is a middle-range framework for analysing how large sociotechnical systems—energy, mobility, food, water—shift from one dominant configuration to another. It locates change in the interplay of three analytic levels: protected niches where radical novelties incubate, the incumbent sociotechnical regime that structures ordinary practice, and a slow-moving exogenous landscape. Transitions occur when landscape pressures destabilise the regime and open windows of opportunity for maturing niche innovations to break through.