Thinking outside the box, improvisation, and fast learning: Designing policy robustness to deal with what cannot be foreseen

Policies are continually subjected to turbulence and crises. Interest in policy robustness as a fundamental way to deal with what cannot be foreseen is increasing. Thus, there is a flourishing stream of literature suggesting that policies need to be designed to be agile and flexible. However, the associated characteristics remain undeveloped. This article fills this gap by drawing on lessons obtained from the unplanned behaviors that were adopted in the management of the COVID‐19 pandemic. Individual and organizational behaviors characterized by outside the box thinking, improvisation, and fast learning yielded solutions to unexpected problems. In this article, some of these emblematic unplanned behaviors are assessed, and the research builds on the literature on policy robustness, crisis management, and organizational theory to identify three enabling conditions to design more robust policies: coordinated autonomy, training for unplanned responses, and political institutional capacity.

IN ANTICIPATION OF NEW MIGRATION CRISES RESILIENCE AND ANTICIPATORY GOVERNANCE IN THE EU'S MIGRATION MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK

The concept of resilience has been commonly recognized as a new leitmotif of security governance in the European Union. In the aftermath of the so-called 'migration crisis', resilience has spilled over migration and border management, promoting the notions of resilient Schengen and broadly understood technologization of border management, to name a few. This trend has been only strengthened during the COVID-19 pandemic and the most recent border and refugee crises on the EU eastern border, which have mainstreamed the notions of anticipation, preparedness, and the ability to withstand shocks and disturbances external to the EU as a whole. Building on these developments, this article discusses how anticipatory governance interlocks with resilience within the newly proposed EU migration crisis management framework. In doing so, it provides a more nuanced picture of the EU's post-2015 and 2016 approach to human mobility, asylum, and border protection. Such a take will also allow us to see how exactly the EU has adapted to new migratory circumstances, while conceptualizing the uncertainties related to increased migratory flows and operationalizing specific anticipatory and resilience-centered policy responses.

Effective or predatory funding? Evaluating the hidden costs of grant applications.

Researchers are spending an increasing fraction of their time on applying for funding; however, the current funding system has considerable deficiencies in reliably evaluating the merit of research proposals, despite extensive efforts on the sides of applicants, grant reviewers and decision committees. For some funding schemes, the systemic costs of the application process as a whole can even outweigh the granted resources-a phenomenon that could be considered as predatory funding. We present five recommendations to remedy this unsatisfactory situation.