Turbulent Times: Governing turbulence: Challenges and strategies.
The world is increasingly turbulent – how do we cope with this turbulence, and how do we advance sustainability transformations? The Turbulent Times seminar dives into these questions with perspectives from cutting-edge research. All are welcome.
About the talk
I endeavor to carve out a niche for new and urgent research on how governments foster robust solutions to turbulence that is spurred by the dynamic interactions of support, demand and events that are highly variable, inconsistent, unexpected, and/or unpredictable. Robust governance aims to match the dynamic character of disruptive problems and events with continuous adjustments in governance responses. As such, it goes beyond the immediate crisis response discussed by the crisis management literature and the long-stretched efforts to enhance preparedness and resilience. We live in a near-chronic state of crisis-induced turbulence that calls rethinking public governance and decision-making, including patterns of experimentation and improvisation, agility and fast learning and institutional design. The talk will discuss an analytical framework that captures this predicament and sets a new agenda for public policy and administration research.
About the speaker
Jarle Trondal is Professor of political science at University of Agder and University of Oslo, and a Senior Fellow at University of California, Berkeley. His research interests are in public policy and administration, decision-making and public governance, theories of governance, European integration and multilevel governance, international bureaucracies, and crisis and turbulence.
Turbulent Times seminar series
We live in a turbulent world – paradoxically, we also seem to have decreasing capacity to deal with this turbulence. Climate change is rapidly shifting from a problem we can solve to a more chaotic era of consequences. Global coordinated action to mitigate and adapt seems less and less likely. How can we chart out a sustainable course amid this turbulence? The Turbulent Times seminar series is a space for us to take stock of the times that we are in. What spatial and temporal relations shape our ability to live and act in a meaningful way? What institutional capacities are needed? And how might we need to recalibrate research to make sense of it all?