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

Summary
The focus of European post-pandemic politics is currently on enhancing system capacities for ‘bouncing back’ from crisis to normalcy. These efforts draw on resilience research, which has 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 future crisis governance. The project breaks new ground by operationalizing the concept of robust crisis governance and investigating such responses empirically. We combine historical and comparative analysis at EU, national and local levels to gather a multi-dimensional data set out of which we identify the configurations of factors that drive (or block) robustness in crisis governance. The project studies responses by EU institutions and eight European countries to three recent crises (the financial, refugee and COVID-19 crises) to understand general patterns in system-level crises response, while we also conduct in-depth studies of localized COVID-19 responses ‘on the streets’ of 16 European localities to understand how EU, national and local crisis responses interact and are experienced by citizens.

On this basis, the project delivers the elements of a new 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.
Unfold all
/
Fold all
More information & hyperlinks
Web resources: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101061272
Start date: 01-10-2022
End date: 31-03-2026
Total budget - Public funding: 2 995 026,25 Euro - 2 995 026,00 Euro
Cordis data

Original description

The focus of European post-pandemic politics is currently on enhancing system capacities for ‘bouncing back’ from crisis to normalcy. These efforts draw on resilience research, which has 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 future crisis governance. The project breaks new ground by operationalizing the concept of robust crisis governance and investigating such responses empirically. We combine historical and comparative analysis at EU, national and local levels to gather a multi-dimensional data set out of which we identify the configurations of factors that drive (or block) robustness in crisis governance. The project studies responses by EU institutions and eight European countries to three recent crises (the financial, refugee and COVID-19 crises) to understand general patterns in system-level crises response, while we also conduct in-depth studies of localized COVID-19 responses ‘on the streets’ of 16 European localities to understand how EU, national and local crisis responses interact and are experienced by citizens.

On this basis, the project delivers the elements of a new 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.

Status

SIGNED

Call topic

HORIZON-CL2-2021-DEMOCRACY-01-05

Update Date

09-02-2023
Images
No images available.
Geographical location(s)
Structured mapping
Unfold all
/
Fold all
Horizon Europe
HORIZON.2 Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
HORIZON.2.2 Culture, creativity and inclusive society
HORIZON.2.2.1 Democracy and Governance
HORIZON-CL2-2021-DEMOCRACY-01
HORIZON-CL2-2021-DEMOCRACY-01-05 Politics and governance in a post-pandemic world