This paper is a historical study of two institutions devoted to the problem of the future the Dutch WRR (the Scientific Council for Government) and the Swedish Secretariat for Futures Studiesboth created in 1972. While there is a growing interest in the social sciences for prediction, future imaginaries and the governance of risk, few studies have examined historically the integration of the category of the 'future' or the 'long term' in political systems in the postwar years, a period in which this category took on specific meaning and importance. We suggest that governing the long-term posed fundamental problems to particular societal models of expertise, decisionmaking and public participation. We argue that the scientific and political claim to govern the future was fundamentally contested, and that social struggle around the role and content of predictive expertise determined how the long term was incorporated into different systems of knowledge production and policy-making.

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People who have the necessary capacity to act do better at school and at work, have better health and fewer debts and are better able to deal with the temptations of the market and the responsibilities of the participation society. However, we have also seen that not everyone always has this capacity or to the same extent. So what could be more logical than trying to strengthen the capacity to act through education or training?This chapter discusses whether training can provide a solution in this case. We are focusing on three questions:• How far is it possible to improve someone's self-control, executive functions or self-regulation by means of practice or intervention? • How far is it possible to learn certain domain-specific skills, such as how to deal with money sensibly? • To what extent is the government normatively permitted to offer or even impose such training?

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Self-reliance in Everyday Life 2.1 The Daily Challenge of Self-reliance Maintaining a healthy lifestyle, managing personal finances, finding and holding down a job-these are challenges that everyone faces. This chapter focuses on the following question: what mental capacities must an individual have to be able to meet these challenges? Health, personal finance and the job market are not the subject of this book, but they do illustrate the importance of having the right mental capacities to be selfreliant in our society. In this chapter we describe situations that apply to a relatively large number of people. While the chapter reports on research conducted in the Netherlands, the situations that it describes also occur in similar forms in other Western countries. We make an analytical distinction between the capacities needed to avoid problems (prevention) and the capacities needed to cope with problems (control). In real life, we see that some of these capacities are important in both situations, and that problems do not always have a clear starting point. This chapter is based on various sources. In each domain, we conducted a number of interviews with professionals and other stakeholders (more than 60 interviews in total, see Appendix I). We asked our interviewees what people must be able to do to be self-reliant and what typifies those who are good or bad at it. To provide solid underpinnings for the information obtained in our interviews, we draw on research conducted within the various domains. Because we aim to reflect on everyday experience in this chapter, we sometimes use the language of daily life. In addition to capacities, then, we also refer to health literacy, financial literacy, and job market skills. In the following sections, we review what is required of people in each domain and then discuss the role mental capacities play in each context.