Conținut
We are living, once again, in a moment of maximum governmental volatility. Resigning ministers, an ongoing motion of censure, negotiations that may drag on for weeks or months, a caretaker government, a minority one, or any other scenario we follow while glued to our screens. The collective reflex of civil society in such moments is a familiar one: we retreat, we draw attention to the fact that we are in a crisis, and we wait for things to settle before resuming dialogue with decision-makers on concrete projects. It is a human reflex. It may also be a strategic mistake.
A period of governmental instability is precisely the moment when civil society organisations and think tanks like Edge Institute should accelerate and amplify the actions that define them. The argument can be found formulated, in different ways, across a wealth of research and articles that I will mention in the following paragraphs.
"Off the Sidelines, onto the Front Line"
James McGann, former director of the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, was direct on this subject: “Think tanks must be on the front lines, not on the sidelines, preparing society for the transformative changes we face now and in the future.” And further, from The Future of Think Tanks and Policy Advice Around the World: “for every crisis, a window of opportunity opens to create new projects and new ways of implementing public policies.” Political instability is a form of disruption, an uncomfortable one, admittedly.
A similar question is asked by Mark Schmitt in Democracy Journal: how do policy organisations remain relevant when the premises and processes under which they were born have been overturned, when the very idea of informed decision-making is under attack? His answer is a proactive one: organisations that survive repeated political changes are those that redefine and reaffirm their usefulness especially during the crisis itself.
McGann also formulates the questions he proposes as a future (institutional) reflex: “What can we learn from this? What can we do differently? How can we turn adversity into an opportunity for growth and change?” This may be motivational rhetoric. Or it may be a description of what differentiates organisations that grow during periods of crisis from those that simply survive until better times.
The Window Is Not Always Small
The theory of windows of opportunity, formulated by American political scientist John Kingdon and adopted by almost every public policy textbook, describes the rare moments when problems, solutions, and the political context align and a real chance for change opens up. According to the Handbook on Think Tanks in Public Policy (Abelson & Rastrick, 2021), think tanks have precisely the role of being prepared for these moments: “when policy windows open, think tanks can play a role in pushing solutions more firmly into decision-making processes and the places where decisions are made.”
Enrique Mendizabal, one of the most widely read authors on the subject of policy ecosystems, called this “strategic opportunism” and described it in How Change Happens and What Can Think Tanks Do About It?. Beyond reacting to windows of opportunity, organisations that influence public policies must above all anticipate them. And in the case of “unscheduled windows”, such as the current political crisis, these are the organisations with the internal capacity and communicational reach to respond quickly and precisely, with solutions already prepared.
There is another relevant factor in this context: the duration of the transition. Edwin Feulner, co-founder of one of the most famous think tanks in the world, described the logic behind the celebrated Mandate for Leadership, the 1,100-page guide prepared by the Heritage Foundation for the Reagan administration: “I felt strongly that the people entering the administration should have a source of information and guidance other than the one they received from those they were replacing.” Reagan gave a copy to each cabinet minister and asked them to read it. The rest is history. Or, more precisely, public policy.
Romania is far from America. Our transitions are more frequent and last on average under a month, too short for significant influence. However, the current period of instability bears no resemblance to a normal change of governments. A caretaker executive with a minority political mandate, weeks of negotiations to rebuild a coalition that may drag on, with portfolios reshuffled in cascade, can produce an extended window, closer than ever to the scale of the period described in the books mentioned above. It is only a hypothesis, admittedly, but one that currently merits being taken seriously.
Who Knows What the New Minister Does Not Know
There is a structural advantage that civic organisations hold over any new government: memory. A newly appointed minister is unaware of what was negotiated two years ago, which pilot project failed and why, which proposal was left unanswered in a drawer. Researchers in the field are explicit: think tanks function, through their continuity, as “institutional repositories of problems and solutions” (Handbook on Think Tanks in Public Policy, 2021), a living memory of what works and what fails in each area of public policy.
Bausch and Kraemer, in a chapter from the volume The Future of Think Tanks and Policy Advice Around the World(McGann, ed., Springer, 2021), go even further: “Think tanks have the task of serving as the memory of society and reminding decision-makers not to repeat the mistakes of the past.”
In our case, it must be noted: Edge Institute has 15 months of activity. Our own institutional memory is short. But the Romanian civic ecosystem, organisations that have been working for years on digitalisation, such as ANIS, Concordia, Code4Romania, RBL, CJI, EFOR, and those active in the field of administrative reform, education, health, etc., accumulates an enormous reservoir of knowledge with each passing year, invisible to some; a form of capital that, together, we can activate more fully in times of crisis, if political actors are willing to engage.
What Organisations That Grow in Crisis Do
Studies that tracked the behaviour of European think tanks during the 2008 financial crisis document a clear pattern: the organisations CEPS and Bruegel in Brussels “expanded their networks for the purpose of differentiation, credibility, and reputation” precisely during the years of crisis. This expansion, the researchers note in the Handbook on Think Tanks in Public Policy, was made possible through the active involvement of boards and through the deliberate formation of communities of experts present in the debates of the moment.
Edwin Feulner also has several powerful quotes that underscore the importance of continuity. “In public policy, there are no final victories and no final defeats. There are only permanent battles.” Feulner argued that one must constantly be an entrepreneur of ideas. “It does us no good to have good ideas if we are not there to sell our products”.
There is also an important nuance brought by the research of Boin et al. in Policy and Society (2022): crisis does not automatically produce reform. The expression “never waste a good crisis” is, in the authors’ words, “one of the most frequently used phrases when a crisis breaks out,” but empirical evidence shows that reforms occur only when there are actors who actively exploit the moment.
The logic is simple and can be found formulated in the Latin American context as well, in the same volume: “in times of crisis, policy advice is still needed to justify decisions, and decision-makers seem to need solid advisors more than ever.” A new minister, without crystallised priorities and without a consolidated team, is paradoxically more permeable to external ideas than one who is midway through their mandate, primarily because they have not yet had the chance to build the self-protective walls of stable power.
A Plea for Action
Beyond the idea of civic engagement, what we are talking about is first and foremost proactivity, being proactive in the way each of us knows how: with analyses ready, with concrete proposals on the table, available for consultation right now, not just after the new government has structured its priorities and the new ministers have met and built their teams. From our experience of just over a year, as well as that of the organisations we communicate with, those that are already well established, this process of rebuilding the foundations of a new government takes far longer than it should and is often carried out in the absence of voices from outside the system.
How do we translate proactivity into concrete terms? Specifically: briefings prepared for the ministries where we have expertise, regardless of whether we know who the minister will be. Dialogues initiated with teams that need support even during this period. Specific project proposals that can be implemented. Think tanks are, in Mendizabal’s words, “incubators and repositories of valuable resources for decision-makers and other actors interested in public policy.” The value of those resources grows in times of crisis.
The same message is conveyed by the CIVICUS 2023 report on the state of global civil society: “Civil society should remain vigilant during periods of political change, including when progressive forces come to power, to ensure that political leaders honour their promises of change.” Vigilance can be something other than waiting. For example, it can mean an active presence, precisely when things are in motion.
At Edge Institute, we are working on this across digitalisation, AI governance, the digital infrastructure of public services, and other topics addressed in our research. We will bring our work to decision-makers regardless of whether they hold interim or long-term mandates, because the issues we track do not take a political crisis holiday. Moreover, given that we rank among the last in all European and OECD indices related to digitalisation, every month of delay in adopting coherent policies on these issues carries real costs — indifferent to whether the government at Victoria Palace is a caretaker, a transitional one, or one with prospects of stability.
The Mission Remains. Relevance Must Be Earned
Political instability is real and costly, but for civic organisations and think tanks with relevant expertise, it also comes with an additional argument for action. McGann formulates the general rule best: “innovative and agile think tanks will be best positioned to take advantage of the opportunities presented by this new and dynamic public policy environment.”
Schmitt adds the harsher, but necessary, perspective: policy organisations that do not redefine themselves in a crisis do not survive the crisis. Beyond the financial aspect, survival is above all a question of relevance. And relevance lost during periods of transition is rarely recovered easily afterwards.
A new window of opportunity has opened. We recognise the memory in the organisations around us and have been building our own for 15 months. The mission remains the same and our research capacity is running at full speed. We carry on.