Toward resilience: Innovation and change for a robust state
© Daimler und Benz Stiftung - Martin73
How can the resilience of the state, the economy, and society be increased in the face of multiple crises? The starting point for discussions at this Ladenburg Roundtable is the assumption that innovation provides a substantial impetus for resilience. In four topic-based panels, experts from Germany and throughout Europe explore how incentives for innovation can be created through changes in governance structures and processes, and to what extent this can increase resilience.
Explanatory text:
The concept of resilience – unlike notions such as “crisis management” or “stabilization” – does not set out to shield against or control environmental influences while maintaining an existing institutional order. Rather, it is concerned with the ability of a system to flexibly adapt to modified environmental conditions. Increasing resilience thus involves improving the ability to adapt to social challenges characterized by crisis, such as climate change or digitalization. This means that increasing the resilience of affected organizations and part-systems is based in particular on the ability to bring forth and implement innovations. Corresponding processes of adaptation in the private and public sectors are borne along by technological, organizational, and social innovations. These do not necessarily have to take the form of radical disruptions; an experimental recombination of diverse elements and components with differing degrees of innovation can likewise contribute to these processes of change.
The state assumes a key role here in two respects: First, it can and must subject its own structures and processes in politics and administration to adaptations that strengthen resilience, for example by reducing bureaucracy, through digitalization, and by making processes more flexible. After all, only a political framework that is itself characterized by state and administrative structures oriented toward innovation, along with appropriate patterns of action, can also help increase the resilience of the part-systems embedded within the economy and society. And second, it can provide incentives for innovation within the economy and society and support these by devising new rules for order and new processes, by creating financial leeway, and by facilitating knowledge flows and learning processes. The field of action of the resilient state thus ranges from political innovation in government and administration to an innovation policy that exercises influence on the private sector.
Analysis of the changes in governance structures and processes for the purpose of increasing resilience reveals the need for a reappraisal of both theoretical and empirical aspects. Research efforts to date have remained largely fragmented between the various disciplines and are therefore limited in their analytical reach. Rather, the focus should be on evaluating the complex systemic connection between changes in state governance for increasing resilience and the resulting political conflicts of aims – such as those between innovation and flexibility on the one hand and legal certainty and reservations with regard to state actions on the other. This complexity poses significant analytical challenges, since interactions, externalities, feedbacks, and unintended effects must be taken into account here.
- Prof. Dr. Nathalie Behnke, Institute of Political Science, TU Darmstadt
- Prof. Dr. Alexander Ebner, Faculty of Social Sciences, Goethe University Frankfurt