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AbstractToday the world is confronted with dual crises: creeping and acute threats unfolding at the same time—for example, the manifestation of extreme weather events such as drought and flooding and the creeping crisis of climate change. To cope with dual crises, this article develops a novel temporal perspective that offers policy actors a repertoire of interrelated strategies for enhancing the robustness of institutional efforts. The repertoire consists of five temporal strategies that policy actors can use to navigate the twin challenges of immediate and latent threats in conjunction: strategic coupling of short‐term shocks and creeping crises, crafting time horizons, molding the pace of public problem‐solving, mobilizing anticipatory capacity through futuring techniques, and adaptive iteration of policy decisions. We illustrate the practical application of these strategies in an exploratory case study of adaptive water management in the Netherlands.SamenvattingDe wereld wordt geconfronteerd met duale crises: sluipende en acute dreigingen op hetzelfde moment, zoals extreme weersgebeurtenissen als droogte of watersnood tegelijkertijd met de sluipende crisis van klimaatverandering. Om te reageren op duale crises, ontwikkelt dit artikel een nieuw repertoire van vijf temporele strategieën voor beleidsmakers om de robuustheid van overheidssystemen te vergroten. Dit repertoire bestaat uit de volgende strategieën: strategische koppeling van onverwachte korte termijn schokken en sluipende crises, tijdshorizonnen creëren, het tempo aanpassen van implementatie, het mobiliseren van anticiperende capaciteit door middel van scenariotechnieken, en de adaptieve iteratie van beleidsbeslissingen. We illustreren de werking van deze vijf strategieën aan de hand van een uitgewerkt voorbeeld van adaptief watermanagement in Nederland: de invoering van het programma Ruimte voor de Rivier.

ABSTRACT
Policy often has to perform amidst uncertain and rapidly changing conditions. Robustness is the ability to perform and achieve intended effects under unknown conditions. Robust design can benefit from the capacity to anticipate developments early. A system of early warning is a method to anticipate change early and help policy design to be more robust. Early warning can enable moment of 'consecration', moments where reflection on assumptions and biased of policy design can be challenged and changed; this can be an important addition to the robustness of policy design. However, early warning is not unproblematic; it is an organizational practice that inherently invokes issues of habituation, organizational bias, as it challenges the status quo. In this paper, we study how policy makers who 'do' early warning in the context of robust policy engage with these issues and how they managed to improve the robustness of policy design. We do so by studying an empirical case of an early warning system in The Netherlands. We analyze how the system was build, how it worked, how it was further professionalized, and what the system did to the capacity of the organization to design and deliver robust policy.

Parmi les rares conclusions rigoureuses de la littérature consacrée aux politiques publiques, on trouve le fait que la dynamique politique est à la fois une fonction de stabilité et de volatilité. Et bien que la plupart des théories relatives à la politique publique postulent que la survenue de moments critiques politiques constitue une condition nécessaire à un changement d'envergure, les études qui cherchent à démêler l'écheveau des mécanismes sous-jacents de ces moments critiques demeurent relativement rares. Le présent article développe l'hypothèse selon laquelle ces moments critiques, généralement considérés comme des vecteurs de changements d'envergure, impliquent pour l'essentiel une causalité commune. Nous montrons que les forces du changement ont une nature commune et qui les renforce mutuellement à l'aide d'une étude de cas axée sur la réglementation relative aux primes. Le présent article, qui se base sur une analyse documentaire et une analyse de programme politique, démontre que la plupart des changements de la règlementation relative aux primes étaient marginaux. Nous soutenons que la nature intrinsèquement attrayante de la récompense des performances, combinée à une totale absence d'alternatives soutenues par une coalition forte et visant à modérer l'appétit du risque sur les marchés financiers, semble jouer un rôle dans la résilience des pratiques en matière de primes. En théorie, l'étude de cas contribue au développement de la théorie de la causalité commune qui entraîne des changements politiques majeurs. Sur le mode empirique, elle expose un mécanisme clé utilisé par le secteur financier pour résister aux réformes : proposer une alternative que personne ne peut refuser. Remarques à l'intention des praticiens La littérature relative à la politique exprime un vaste consensus quant au fait que les changements politiques résultent généralement de forces multiples. Nous identifions cette causalité commune des changements politiques et suggérons que parmi les forces du changement, une alternative politique forte capable d'unir une vaste coalition de parties prenantes constitue une condition nécessaire à un changement politique. Il est donc peu probable que les réformes financières, et plus spécifiquement la pratique des primes, soient moins le résultat d'une réglementation stricte que d'alternatives réelles pour récompenser l'excellence professionnelle et réduire l'appétit du risque.

One of the few robust findings in the public policy literature is that policy dynamics are both a function of stability and volatility. And although most theories of public policy making posit the occurrence of policy junctures as necessary conditions for significant change, studies that set out to unravel the underlying mechanisms of such policy junctures remain relatively rare. This article further develops the idea of policy junctures, commonly hypothesized to initiate significant change, as essentially entailing joint causation. We illustrate the joint and reinforcing nature of forces of change with a case study of bonus regulation. Based on document analysis and a political claim analysis, this article shows that most changes in bonus regulation were of a marginal nature. We argue that the intrinsically attractive nature of performance rewards that a bonus practice entails combined with a sheer lack of alternatives supported by a strong coalition on how to curb risk appetite in financial markets seem to count for the resilience of bonus practices. Theoretically, the case study contributes to theory development on joint causation that causes major policy change. Empirically, it unravels a key mechanism employed by the financial sector to resist reforms: offering an alternative no one can refuse. Points for practitioners There is a broad consensus in the policy literature that policy change usually results from multiple forces. We identify this crucial jointly causal nature of policy change and suggest that among the forces of change a strong policy alternative capable of uniting a broad coalition of stakeholders is a necessary condition for policy change. Financial reforms, in particular the practice of bonus payment, are thus not likely to result from tight regulation, but rather from real alternatives on how to reward professional excellence and curb risk appetite.

This article looks at policy failure in systems that rely on highly autonomous organizations to deliver the services promised in the policy programs. We argue that in order to better understand success and failure in such systems, the existing categories of policy failure and organizational failure do not suffice. Therefore, we look at the ability of agents assigned to that task to effectively act in the relation in-between the system level and the level of individual organizations. This brings to the fore another type of failure – governance failure – the inability of a policy system to timely detect and asses looming failure in individual parts. It is helpful to apply a lens of interactive complexity to these systems and to look at causal loops rather than causal lines. We apply this perspective to a case of the Inspectorate of Education, to study how it dealt with three cases of looming failure in schools. The perspective of causal loops helped the Inspectorate to understand in hindsight how two schools collapsed, and it was then used proactively to intervene in a third school. The paper helps practitioners to better deal with failure in layered policy and sets an agenda for further research into the use of circular dynamics for policy analysis and intervention.

This article looks at policy failure in systems that rely on highly autonomous organizations to deliver the services promised in the policy programs. We argue that in order to better understand success and failure in such systems, the existing categories of policy failure and organizational failure do not suffice. Therefore, we look at the ability of agents assigned to that task to effectively act in the relation in-between the system level and the level of individual organizations. This brings to the fore another type of failure – governance failure – the inability of a policy system to timely detect and asses looming failure in individual parts. It is helpful to apply a lens of interactive complexity to these systems and to look at causal loops rather than causal lines. We apply this perspective to a case of the Inspectorate of Education, to study how it dealt with three cases of looming failure in schools. The perspective of causal loops helped the Inspectorate to understand in hindsight how two schools collapsed, and it was then used proactively to intervene in a third school. The paper helps practitioners to better deal with failure in layered policy and sets an agenda for further research into the use of circular dynamics for policy analysis and intervention.