Perri 6
Professor in Public Management
Queen Mary University of London

Summary of article

After crises and disasters, pundits regularly write articles and books calling for more resilience in policymaking, and the Covid-19 pandemic has been an especially rich opportunity for advocates of resilience (e.g., https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-70179-6_14). Business project management jargon about ‘agility’ gets used to urge politicians and their advisers to do their policymaking more fluidly in response to constant change. In 2016, even the Cabinet Office joined in the fun, issuing guidance on agility in open policymaking. Some writers now advocate greater use of improvisation in policymaking. Others argue for ways of working among policymakers which can lead to policy designs that can withstand shocks – or robustness. Long advocated by the RAND Corporation as way of handling uncertainty, academics too are now urging greater efforts to pursue robustness Continue reading →