ROBUST Crisis Governance in Turbulent Times – Mindset, Evidence, Strategies

Project Information

ROBUST

Grant agreement ID: 101061272

DOI

10.3030/101061272

Project closed

EC signature date 2 June 2022

Start date 1 October 2022

End date 31 March 2026

Funded under

• Culture, creativity and inclusive society

Total cost

€ 2 995 026,25

EU contribution

€ 2 995 026,25

Coordinated by

ROSKILDE UNIVERSITET
Denmark

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ROBUST (ROBUST Crisis Governance in Turbulent Times – Mindset, Evidence, Strategies)

Reporting period: 2023-10-01 to 2024-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

In the aftermath of COVID-19, the political focus was on enhancing system capacities for ‘bouncing back’ from crisis to normalcy. Those efforts drew on resilience research, which had become the dominant paradigm in crisis management. However, there are broad governance challenges that the resilience approach fails to consider. Centrally, how can European societies harness flexible adaptation and proactive innovation to deliver effective crisis responses in situations, where going back to the way things were is neither possible nor desirable? And how can democratic institutions uphold core values such as democracy, the rule of law, and fundamental rights in the face of crisis-induced turbulence? To address these challenges, the ROBUST project aims to set in motion a paradigm shift from ‘resilience’ (‘bouncing back’) to ‘robustness’ (‘building back better’) as the central principle of crisis governance. The project breaks new ground by operationalizing the concept of robust crisis governance and investigating such responses empirically. On this basis, the project delivers the elements of a new crisis management mindset along with policy recommendations for enabling the robust crisis governance of the future, all anchored in a learning hub that will serve as the social engine of the paradigm shift envisioned by the project.

Overall project objectives:
1. Create a conceptualization of robust crisis governance applicable across multiple levels and sectors
2. Investigate EU and national-level drivers and barriers for robust crisis governance
3. Study “networked localities” to understand the messy reality of multi-level crisis governance
4. Identify configurations of factors leading to robust governance responses
5. Build a learning hub to create a widely shared understanding of robust crisis governance

Work Packages:
WP1 - Management and Coordination (M1-M12)
WP2 - Defining robust crisis governance in turbulent times (M1-M12)
WP3 – Impacts of interactivity in multi-level governance (M7-M20)
WP4 – Impacts of hybridity in governance, democracy, and law (M7-M20)
WP5 – Impacts of negotiation in societal intelligence (M7-M20)
WP6 - Cases of crisis governance in networked localities (M12-M34)
WP7 – Configurational analysis (M26-M37)
WP8 – Learning Hub (M1-M42)
WP9 – Dissemination, exploitation, and communication (M1-M42)
WP10 – Ethics (M1-M42)

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

UPDATED FEBRUARY 2025

Conceptualizing robust crisis governance
The basic conceptual work in ROBUST is complete. The concepts of “societal turbulence” and “robust governance” have been defined theoretically and proof of concept has been provided in the context of COVID-19, the refugee crisis (2015-16) and the financial crisis (2008-09) (D2.1). These basic concepts have been used to describe a repertoire of robustness strategies such as vigilance, creation of redundancies, buffers and slack, bricolage, experimentation, bounded autonomy etc. (D2.2.). The project has further defined and explored three conditioning governance factors based on the existing literature, namely multilevel governance (D3.1) hybrid governance (D4.1) and societal intelligence (D5.1).

Public outputs produced under this objective include:
• Robust Governance in Turbulent Times - a co-authored monograph published in Cambridge University Press’ Elements series:
• Ideational Robustness: Robust Policy Ideas in Turbulent Times - a special issue of Policy and Society
• Robust Politics and Governance in Turbulent Times - a special issue of Public Administration

Investigating drivers and barriers for robust crisis governance
To explore robust crisis governance empirically, a first round of empirical work was conducted, which started in the previous reporting perioded and was finalized in the current. This first round of empirical work consisted in exploratory case studies of governance responses to COVID-19, the 2015-16 refugee crisis, and the 2008-9 financial crisis. More specifically the consortium has produced 9 national reports with 33 case studies based on 108 interviews and extensive documents studies. The most interesting findings in the national reports are reflected in the second set of deliverables made under this objective, namely D3.2 D4.2 and D5.2.)

The purpose of these case studies and national reports was to enable empirically based hypothesis development concerning the drivers and barriers of robust governance. This purpose has been fulfilled, as evidenced by the production of the second set of deliverables, which were created once the empirical material was in hand. These deliverables draw on the exploratory empirical material to identify the apparent impact of the governance factors on robust governance and develop a set of testable hypotheses about drivers and barriers (D3.2 D4.2 and D5.2).

Public outputs underway under this objective include:
• Special issue of International Journal of Public Sector Management (expected 2025)
• Special issue of Public Policy and Administration (expected 2026)

Study “networked localities” to understand the messy reality of multi-level crisis governance
Empirical work under this objective has been completed in 2024 according to plan and deliverables are being finalized for publication.

The empirical work conducted under this objective focuses on governance responses to COVID-19 aiming at ensuring children’s well-being during lockdowns. The scope of the case studies is so-called ‘networked localities’, i.e. local governance areas of medium size (50.000-250.000 citizens) taking into account the full multi-level governance context. For each locality, we analyze two initiatives (i.e. ‘public value solutions’) taken by local government or other local actors (e.g. NGOs, networks) to support children’s mental and social well-being. 35 case studies were completed in total. The case studies in WP6 were designed for systematic comparison following a jointly developed research protocol (D6.1).

Public outputs underway under this objective include:
• Open datasets (available 2026)

Identify configurations of factors leading to robust governance responses
The analytical work of identifying configurations of factors leading to robust governance responses is underway and will be delivered in 2025. This work consists partly of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) applied to the dataset gathered in the second round of case studies (see above) and partly of traditional cross-case comparative analysis.

Public outputs underway under this objective include:
• Edited volume (contracted, expected 2026)

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

N/A yet.

logo-to-summary.png