The ROBUST Framework: Proof of Concept

The EU financed research project ROBUST aims to address the fact that poly-crises and heightened turbulence seem to have become the new normal. For decades crises and rising turbulence were relative rare, occasional, and short-lived together with expert-driven crisis management that quickly restored normalcy. Now we are facing a new predicament where crises are increasingly frequent, multiple, overlapping, and mutually reinforcing and seem to trigger unpredictable dynamics ‘where events, demands, and support interact and change in highly variable, inconsistent, unexpected or unpredictable ways’ (Ansell & Trondal, 2017). The ROBUST project claims that we are living in times of heightened turbulence that calls for robust governance that allows to maintain some degree of stability in the fundamental values, goals, and functions of public governance while changing the modus operandi of the public sector by means of adaptation and innovation that might open up new possibility and bring us to a new and better place. As such, the ROBUST project builds on the assumption that the choice for public leaders and governors is not between stability and change, but between different combinations of stability and change that mutually support each other (Ansell, Sørensen & Torfing, 2023).

The overall purpose of WP2 is to construct theoretical and operational definitions of the key concepts of turbulence and robustness. WP2 lays the conceptual foundation for the ROBUST project by providing generic definitions of turbulence and robustness based on interdisciplinary literature reviews and theoretical and operational definitions of crisis-induced turbulence and robust governance, democracy, and legality. WP2 also aims to provide proof of concept through secondary empirical research and stakeholder engagement and to develop initial diagnostic tools for decisionmakers aiming to respond robustly to turbulence.

This WP2 report provides generic, theoretical, and operational definitions of turbulence and robustness and delivers proof of concept through empirical applications of the concepts and discussions with relevant stakeholders (D2.1). A subsequent WP2 report will discuss how to diagnose societal turbulence, present a broad repertoire of robustness strategies supported by a robust mindset, and finally reflect on the choice and evaluation of robustness strategies (D2.2.)