Research on preventive governance, strategic foresight, and public goods — how institutions can act before foreseeable harm becomes crisis.
“Institutions rarely fail to see risk. They fail to act on it in time.”
The Prevention Lab studies why that happens — and how governance can be redesigned around acting early.
Read the lead essay
Why modern governance must learn to prevent, not just respond. From pandemics and climate disasters to financial shocks and artificial intelligence, today's defining crises are rarely surprises. This essay proposes preventive governance as a framework for the twenty-first century — one that judges institutions not only by how they respond to crises, but by how effectively they prevent them.
Read the essaySelected recent work from across the Lab's research programs.
Policy BriefMajor platforms have spent more on trust and safety than at any point in their history, yet the harms that spending was meant to contain keep multiplying. This brief argues the problem is timing, not effort: platform governance is optimised for detection and response, not anticipation. It applies the Prevention Architecture to four domains, sketches four futures for platform governance to 2035, and sets out what a shift from reactive moderation to preventive governance would require.
Working PaperThe foundational working paper of The Prevention Lab. It argues that the central challenge of modern governance is not ignorance but conversion — the repeated failure to turn foresight into authorized, financed, and legitimate action before harm becomes crisis. It develops preventive governance as a doctrine drawing together five traditions (the responsibility to protect, human security, public-goods theory, early warning, and development finance), locates the recurring failure in the Prevention Gap, treats prevention as a public good whose provision now implicates private as well as public power, and sets out where reform and measurement should concentrate.
Six domains where anticipation, public value, and institutional design intersect.
Redesigning institutions to act before crises become inevitable.
Anticipating discontinuities and turning foresight into decisions.
Valuing and strengthening goods that markets undersupply.
Governing AI as public infrastructure; protecting the information environment.
Early warning and governance for climate and forest risk.
How institutions absorb shocks and sustain capability over time.
The concepts that anchor the Lab's research on preventive governance.
Why institutions act late — and how governance can be redesigned around anticipation.
A diagnostic framework explaining the structural, cognitive, and political reasons institutions consistently act after the optimal moment for intervention — and how decision systems can be rebuilt around anticipation.
Read the frameworkReframing how we value the contributions institutions make to goods that markets undersupply.
A conceptual framework for thinking about how much different actors — governments, technology companies, foundations, and multilateral institutions — contribute to public goods that markets undersupply.
Read the frameworkPublic goods whose value lies in the harm they avoid.
A concept for identifying a distinct class of public goods — those whose entire value lies in averted harm: disinformation prevention, election integrity, climate early warning, AI safety, cybersecurity, and conflict prevention.
Read the frameworkThe next generation of governance will be judged not only by how it responds to crises, but by how consistently it prevents them.
An occasional note when we publish a new essay, brief, or framework in preventive governance. Infrequent, and easy to unsubscribe.