Complex challenges such as Weaponised Trade require sophisticated responses drawing on experts from a range of disciplines. However, one of the difficulties of expert advice is that experts tend to offer their own perspectives with limited cross-pollinisation from other disciplines. In addition, experts tend to present their own views with limited genuine discussion time available to delve more deeply into these issues.
This month marks the beginning of our Delphi Rounds, where we bring together small groups of experts from a range of disciplines to engage in deep discussion on weaponised trade and economic coercion.
The Delphi process is a method pioneered to address these problems, created during the Cold War by the RAND Corporation, a US thinktank for defence strategy. It was designed and refined as a means to improve long-term decision making, forecasting, and policy formulation for complex scenarios.[1] Notwithstanding critiques of this method,[2] it has endured as an excellent tool for facilitating discussion between experts.[3] These rounds have brought together leading policy analysts and scholars from across the world and across a range of disciplines. These experts have taken part in multiple rounds of facilitated discussions, drawing on one another’s insights, to identify the most up to date thinking on weaponised trade, legal and policy responses, and how best to position Australia to manage and respond to these challengesthe next 5-10 years.
[1] Norman Crolee Dalkey, (1969) The Delphi Method: An Experimental Study of Group Opinion, RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_memoranda/2005/RM5888.pdf
[2] Harold Sackmann, (1974) Delphi Assessment: Expert Opinion, Forecasting, and Group Process, RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org/pubs/reports/R1283.html
[3] John F.Preble, (1983) “Public sector use of the Delphi technique” 23(1) Technological Forecasting and Social Change 75-88.