Governance Resilience: Key properties of systemic adaptability in climate policy networks

Across different disciplines, resilience is defined as the capacity of a system to recover quickly from an external shock or from rapid internal transformation, while retaining some of its original properties in order to still be able to fulfil its main functions. System properties and functions are relevant in policymaking and governance as they determine governance capacity and the potential of the system to deliver relevant outputs that can, e.g., address major societal challenges such as climate change. In this context, we ask: How does the resilience of a climate governance system depend on its structure, or how strongly can the system structure change but maintain main properties and functions? To answer this question, we adopt a relational perspective and conceive of the climate governance system as a complex network of actors dealing with climate policy in a multitude of national and international venues. The system structure is thus expressed through network properties. We proceed as follows: first, we review the literature on resilience and compare concepts, such as robustness or stability, that also indicate key systemic properties of interest. Second, we identify different types of shocks that have the ability to impact climate governance networks. Third, we outline network measures and models that are able to grasp the reaction of a climate governance network to such shocks, and signal higher or lower resilience of a system. Finally, we illustrate this with selected case studies and simulations. We conclude that network approaches to governance need to acknowledge the capacity for change and flexibility “after a shock”, and that different governance network structures might show the same properties and fulfil the same functions in order to address relevant societal issues, such as, e.g., climate mitigation or pandemic crisis management.