Ideational robustness in turbulent times

Abstract

The concept of robustness has received increasing scholarly attention regarding public policy and governance, where it has enhanced our understanding of how policies and governance are adapted and innovated in response to disruptive events, challenges, and demands associated with heightened societal turbulence. Yet, we know little about the robustness of the ideas undergirding the efforts to foster robust policymaking and public governance. Based on a review of recent strands of governance theory and the ideational turn in public policy research, we define a new ideational robustness concept, which can help us to explain why some governance and policy ideas persist, while others disappear. As the contributions to this special issue demonstrate, studying ideational robustness opens new avenues for reflecting on how the robustness of ideas may affect the robustness of public policy and governance.