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Foresight has evolved as a distinct prospective analytical tool: it considers alternative futures of various S&T fields or socio-economic systems by bringing together the representatives of various stakeholder groups, and thus assists the decision-making processes at different levels. In order to avoid the emerging of “hype – disappointment cycles”, which could be observed in the case of new, initially promising technologies, the potential contributions to decision-making processes by foresight should be clearly understood. The paper puts foresight into this broader context of policy (decision) –making processes: it describes the evolution of different policy rationales since the 1950s, develops a framework to classify the impacts of various types of prospective analyses, and reviews the evaluation results of several national foresight programmes by using this framework