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Clement Bezold
American political scientist and futurist who edited Anticipatory Democracy and co-founded the Institute for Alternative Futures.
Clement Bezold is an American political scientist and futurist with a PhD in political science from the University of Florida.1 The Institute for Alternative Futures was founded in 1977 by Alvin Toffler, Jim Dator and Bezold, at first as part of Antioch University, and became an independent non-profit in 1979.2 It worked with over 700 organisations, from communities and legislatures to health systems, and closed at the end of 2019.2 In 1982 he started Alternative Futures Associates, a consulting firm.1 Much of his writing is on the future of health care.1
A few years after Future Shock, Toffler asked him to edit a book reviewing experiments in looking ahead and involving the public.3 At the institute he developed an "aspirational futures" approach, which builds scenarios along expectable, challenging and visionary paths and uses them to help communities choose a preferred future.3 He counts Alternatives for Washington, in which more than 60,000 people took part and voted on eleven alternative futures, among the most significant programmes of its kind.3
He is the editor of Anticipatory Democracy, with an introduction by Alvin Toffler. His reading of Toffler's argument appears in Future Shock, and the book appears in the history of anticipatory democracy in foresight and anticipation.
- affiliation
- Institute for Alternative Futures
- role
- political scientist and futurist
makes
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A 1978 collection edited by Clement Bezold, introduced by Alvin Toffler, on 1970s experiments that put forecasts and alternative futures before citizens, legislatures and city and state governments.
Tags: anticipatory democracy, futures studies, scenarios