Designing for adaptation: Static and dynamic robustness in policy‐making

Abstract Policy tools are chosen and deployed in the expectation that they will continue to work effectively over extended periods of time. This is a tall expectation to meet, given that the nature of policy problems and their contexts change constantly. To continue to operate effectively in the face of these changes and respond to policy feedback from policy actors and outputs, policy mixes must be robust. This robustness is of two types: static robustness in which policy means adapt while policy goals remain unchanged, and dynamic robustness in which both goals and tools change. The first equates robustness with resilience—that is, the ability to bounce back to a previous state and attain original goals in altered contexts caused by some change in internal or external conditions. The second, however, is more complex as it can involve changes in aspects of policy goals as well as means in order to allow policies to adapt more broadly by altering their form in response to changing circumstances. This second type of “dynamic robustness” focuses attention on the need for agility and upon the requisites for the creation of policy designs which allow for substantive changes in form as well as state. The article lays out these concepts and their interrelationships and the kinds of procedural and other tools involved in achieving either. It illustrates their features and differences using examples from different sectoral cases.