Governance in Turbulent Times

Abstract

Abstract What are the conditions for political development and decay, and the likelihood of sustained political order? What are the limits of established rule as we know it? How much stress can systems sustain before they reach some kind of limit? How do governments tackle enduring ambiguity and uncertainty in their systems and environments? These are some of the big questions of our time. Governance in turbulent times may serve as a stress-test of well-known ways of governing in the twenty-first century. This work discusses this pertinent challenge and suggests how governments and organizations cope with and live with turbulence. It explores how organizations and institutions respond to precipitous, conflicting, and novel—in short, turbulent—governance challenges. Building on prior work in organization theory and political science, this volume argues that turbulence refers to situations where governance organizations and institutions must cope with (and sometimes create) highly variable, inconsistent, unexpected, and/or unpredictable political and managerial demands. Although turbulence is a chronic condition in many governance domains, it has received limited attention from the contemporary governance literature. This volume argues that turbulent times represent an underappreciated opportunity to examine the resilience of well-known governance patterns and government arrangements.

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