Reframing robustness, reclaiming politics: a constructivist reappraisal of robust governance in turbulent times

Robust governance theory has gained traction in public administration as a response to the perceived intensification of societal turbulence. Promising institutional resilience through adaptability, agility, and modularity, the framework offers a timely vocabulary for scholars and practitioners seeking to grasp and manage crisis-prone governance environments. Yet from a constructivist perspective, we argue that its growing influence rests on a set of assumptions that warrant closer scrutiny: a realist ontology that reifies turbulence as an objective condition; an instrumentalist design orientation that sidelines interpretive understanding; and a depoliticized account of institutional change that obscures power and strategic framing. Building on the critical policy studies tradition, we recast turbulence as a contingent category that is constructed, mobilized, and institutionalized through governance discourse. This shift opens new analytical ground for interrogating how turbulence framings legitimize contested reforms, restructure institutional authority, and silence alternative voices. Rather than rejecting robustness as a governance aspiration, we call for a constructivist reorientation that situates governance robustness within the politics of problem framing and demands greater reflexivity about the normative and epistemological commitments of governance scholarship.