ROBUST Project Concludes in Brussels: Corvinus Researchers Contribute to European Debate on Crisis Governance
The event gathered policymakers, researchers and civil society representatives to discuss how governance systems can operate effectively under sustained turbulence and overlapping crises.
Corvinus University of Budapest was represented by Prof. György Hajnal, Principal Investigator and Head of the Department of Public Policy, and Dr. Gábor Tamás Molnár, Assistant Professor and member of the research team. Prof. Hajnal delivered the concluding synthesis of the conference, integrating the project’s analytical insights with reflections emerging from stakeholder discussions.
The consortium — Roskilde University (Denmark), Utrecht University (Netherlands), University of Turin (Italy), University of Antwerp (Belgium), Tallinn University of Technology (Estonia), Corvinus University of Budapest (Hungary), Masaryk University – Faculty of Economics and Administration (Czech Republic), Nord University (Norway), and the University of Zaragoza (Spain) — conducted comparative research into robust governance strategies and their enabling conditions across three crisis domains and nine European countries.
The empirical foundation included:
- More than 50 in-depth case studies
- Over 250 semi-structured interviews with policymakers and practitioners
- Cross-national comparative analysis of coordination, preparedness and institutional adaptation
The project developed a framework of robust governance based on three enabling dimensions: multi-level governance, hybrid governance approaches, and societal intelligence. The findings demonstrate that robustness is a dynamic institutional capacity rooted in coordination, learning and democratic resilience.
Policy Briefs and Continuing Research
ROBUST has published five concise policy briefs presenting the project’s key insights and recommendations in an accessible format.