The coronavirus crisis is well underway. It’s time we build the machinery—technological, institutional, intellectual, social, political, and economic—that gets us out of this crisis. This goes beyond simply critiquing the current institutions or analyzing their failures. The foundations laid in the next few months will take us forward for at least a generation. If we do it right, much longer.

But this is a larger topic as well. Pandemics are a recurrent feature of civilization. How are we to think about them? What mechanisms, strategies, and philosophical dispositions are called for by such moments?

We’re looking for short or long form contributions on this topic. Submissions for short form should be around 500-1000 words. The intent with the short form is to foster exploratory discourse, so they don’t need to be as heavy or rigorous as a feature article, though full-sized articles are very welcome as well. Neither should they be fire-and-forget; this is a timeless topic, and we should address it in a way that will still be relevant in hindsight.

We are also looking for submissions in our traditional long format. These should be around 2000-4000 words.

In contrast to the anger and fear that prevails in the thick of the crisis, the Governance Futurism approach is to look for positive ways forward. Mere diagnoses won’t form the future. We need cures in the realm of ideas, not just medicine.

The idea is to dissect and analyze competent responses. This could be something actually being done right now, mined for the useful ideas it contains. Or it could be something new and untried. Think about more radical evolutions in the body politic and articulate possible approaches to take us forward. The focus is on good ideas and positive vision, things to build and admire.

Example topics:

• Analysis of current agencies or other parts of US state machinery that are proving themselves against the current pandemic.
• Private initiatives that have picked up the slack to provide critical functionality, which could ultimately be scaled up into something permanent.
• Effective responses that constitute civil disobedience, undertaken out of loyalty to the greater good of our society.
• Examples of successful or partially-successful approaches from other countries that we should learn from. Both for this pandemic and previous disease outbreaks.
• Speculative contributions on actions that should be taken against this pandemic and in general for the future.

Send your drafts to editor@palladiummag.com, or get in touch with us otherwise. We look forward to hearing your ideas.