Robust governance in turbulent times / Christopher Ansell [and three others].

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 30 Apr 2024).

Includes bibliographical references (pages 76-98).

Cover -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Robust Governance in Turbulent Times -- Contents -- 1 Why Do We Need Robust Governance? -- 2 Turbulence: A Challenge for Public Governance -- Living in Turbulent Times -- From Simple and Wicked Problems to Turbulence as a Governance Challenge -- The Concept of Turbulence -- What Causes Turbulence? -- The Complex Relationship between Turbulence and Crisis -- Turbulence as a Problem for Government -- 3 Robust Governance: Background, Definition, and Dynamics -- From Resilience and Agility to Robustness -- Interdisciplinary Literature Review of Robustness -- Defining Robustness -- Robust Governance -- The Dynamics of Robust-Governance Action -- Conclusion -- 4 Strategies for Robust Governance -- Redundancy, Slack, and Buffering: "Keep Something in Your Back Pocket" -- Multivocality and Ambidexterity: "Keep Your Options Open" -- Vigilance: "Prepare to be Surprised" -- Flexible Adaptation: "Stay Ready to Adapt" -- Scaling and Scalability: "Get Ready to Plug-and-Play" -- Modularity and Bricolage: "Recombine, Reuse, and Repurpose Available Tools" -- Proactive Real-Time Innovation: "Be Ready to Improvise, Probe, and Learn" -- Coordination and Collaboration: "Rapidly Convene Actors and Build Trust" -- Building an Architecture for the Robust Governance of Turbulence -- 5 Conditions for Robust Governance -- A Prelude to Conditional Robustness -- Systemic-Level Conditions -- Institution-Level Conditions -- Actor-Level Conditions -- Avenues for Design -- 6 Key Points, Practical Implications, and Future Research Avenues -- Key Points -- Practical Implications -- Future Research Avenues -- References.

This Element aims to build, promote, and consolidate a new social science research agenda by defining and exploring the concepts of turbulence and robustness, and subsequently demonstrating the need for robust governance in turbulent times. Turbulence refers to the unpredictable dynamics that public governance is currently facing in the wake of the financial crisis, the refugee crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, the inflation crisis etc. The heightened societal turbulence calls for robust governance aiming to maintain core functions, goals and values by means of flexibly adapting and proactively innovating the modus operandi of the public sector. This Element identifies a broad repertoire of robustness strategies that public governors may use and combine to respond robustly to turbulence. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.