IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/poango/v12y2024a8596.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Coping With Turbulence and Safeguarding Against Authoritarianism: Polycentric Governance as a Resilience Resource

Author

Listed:
  • Nathalie Behnke

    (Institute of Political Science, TU Darmstadt, Germany)

Abstract

Crisis management during the pandemic stimulated a bulk of analyses and debates on how states and societies coped with this challenge. In many countries, authority migrated temporarily from parliaments to executives and from the subnational to the national level, involving even violations of democratic and individual rights. Such reactions are motivated by the assumption that crisis management requires prompt, decisive, and uniform responses best delivered by a strong and centralised leadership. In contrast to this widespread assumption, crisis and disaster management research compellingly stresses the virtues of polycentric governance and processes based on flexibility, decentrality, and dispersed information in coping with turbulence. In this article, a framework is proposed for analysing empirically the question of what makes states and societies resilient. Core to this framework is the notion of resilience resources. In linking resilience resources to properties of socio-ecological systems and their reactions to turbulence, the resilience concept becomes accessible to empirical analyses. The potential of the framework is illustrated by an empirical example of the coordination of decentralised pandemic management by the German Minister-Presidents’ Conference. This example shows how the resilience resource of polycentric governance is put into practice. The results of the analytical, as well as the empirical part of the article, underpin the claim that resilience is fostered by coordinated decentrality, flexible adaptation, and bricolage instead of centralisation of authority. Fostering resilience in this sense provides also a safeguard against authoritarian tendencies.

Suggested Citation

  • Nathalie Behnke, 2024. "Coping With Turbulence and Safeguarding Against Authoritarianism: Polycentric Governance as a Resilience Resource," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 12.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:poango:v12:y:2024:a:8596
    DOI: 10.17645/pag.8596
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/8596
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/pag.8596?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ostrom, Vincent & Tiebout, Charles M. & Warren, Robert, 1961. "The Organization of Government in Metropolitan Areas: A Theoretical Inquiry," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 55(4), pages 831-842, December.
    2. Heiner, Ronald A, 1983. "The Origin of Predictable Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(4), pages 560-595, September.
    3. Christopher Ansell & Eva Sørensen & Jacob Torfing, 2021. "The COVID-19 pandemic as a game changer for public administration and leadership? The need for robust governance responses to turbulent problems," Public Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(7), pages 949-960, July.
    4. Sean Mueller & Alan Fenna, 2022. "Dual versus Administrative Federalism: Origins and Evolution of Two Models [What can federalism teach us about the European Union? The German experience]," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 52(4), pages 525-552.
    5. Karl E. Weick, 1988. "Enacted Sensemaking In Crisis Situations[1]," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(4), pages 305-317, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christos A Makridis & Andrew A Borkowski & Gil Alterovitz, 2024. "Perspectives on advancing innovation and human flourishing through a network of AI institutes," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 51(3), pages 557-562.
    2. Danielsson, Erna & Nyhlén, Jon & Olausson, Pär M., 2020. "Strategic planning for power shortages," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    3. Jieming Zhu, 2005. "A Transitional Institution for the Emerging Land Market in Urban China," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 42(8), pages 1369-1390, July.
    4. Deller, Steven C. & Hinds, David G. & Hinman, Donald L., 2001. "Local Public Services In Wisconsin: Alternatives For Municipalities With A Focus On Privatization," Staff Papers 12658, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    5. World Bank, 2015. "Republic of Yemen," World Bank Publications - Reports 23660, The World Bank Group.
    6. Peter Wheale & David Hinton, 2007. "Ethical consumers in search of markets," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(4), pages 302-315, May.
    7. Martin G. Kocher & Fangfang Tan & Jing Yu, 2018. "Providing Global Public Goods: Electoral Delegation And Cooperation," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(1), pages 381-397, January.
    8. Christoph Engel, 2006. "The Difficult Reception of Rigorous Descriptive Social Science in the Law," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2006_1, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    9. Randall Morck & Lloyd Steier, 2005. "The Global History of Corporate Governance: An Introduction," NBER Chapters, in: A History of Corporate Governance around the World: Family Business Groups to Professional Managers, pages 1-64, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Esser, Hartmut, 2005. "Rationalität und Bindung : das Modell der Frame-Selektion und die Erklärung des normativen Handelns," Papers 05-16, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.
    11. Gaetano Martino & Giulia Giacchè & Enrica Rossetti, 2016. "Organizing the Co-Production of Health and Environmental Values in Food Production: The Constitutional Processes in the Relationships between Italian Solidarity Purchasing Groups and Farmers," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(4), pages 1-22, March.
    12. repec:dgr:rugsom:97b05 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Amir B. Ferreira Neto & Joshua C. Hall, 2019. "Economies of scale and governance of library systems: evidence from West Virginia," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 237-253, September.
    14. Xie, Junyi & Ifie, Kemefasu & Gruber, Thorsten, 2022. "The dual threat of COVID-19 to health and job security – Exploring the role of mindfulness in sustaining frontline employee-related outcomes," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 216-227.
    15. Chavez, Daniel & Palma, Marco, 2015. "Off the reservation: Pushing the bounds of rationality in experimental auctions," 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California 202164, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    16. Sirola, Nina, 2023. "Going beyond the call of duty under conditions of economic threat: Integrating life history and temporal dilemma perspectives," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    17. Tommasi, Mariano, 1996. "Inflation and the Informativeness of Prices: Microeconomic Evidence from High Inflation," Brazilian Review of Econometrics, Sociedade Brasileira de Econometria - SBE, vol. 16(2), November.
    18. Ron Boschma & Ron Martin, 2010. "The Aims and Scope of Evolutionary Economic Geography," Chapters, in: Ron Boschma & Ron Martin (ed.), The Handbook of Evolutionary Economic Geography, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    19. William J. Luther, 2021. "Behavioral and Policy Responses to COVID-19: Evidence from Google Mobility Data on State- Level Stay-at-Home Orders," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 36(Fall 2021), pages 67-89.
    20. Daniel Sutter, 1997. "Enforcing Constitutional Constraints," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 139-150, June.
    21. Carlisle Ford Runge, 1984. "Strategic Interdependence in Models of Property Rights," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 66(5), pages 807-813.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:poango:v12:y:2024:a:8596. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.