Maintaining resilience and adapting multilevel systems to external shocks

External shocks affect the quality of governance and the stability of political systems around the world. The concept of resilience, which until recently was actively used only in natural science research, has become a key focus for political scientists studying the impact of crises on political institutions in various national contexts. In studies of the causes of resilience to external shocks, a significant place is occupied by studies of multi-level governance, where multi-levelness is considered as a key factor determining the success or failure of a state's adaptation to new conditions.
Adaptation of multi-level political systems to external shocks has been profoundly examined using the example of the natural disasters effects and the COVID-19 pandemic, where the impact of these events on the decision-making process most fully corresponds to the concept of an “external shock” and requires the fastest possible responses. At the same time, the found explanations for the speed and quality of the response of multi-level systems to natural disasters or pandemics are not always suitable for explaining the adaptation of states to such external shocks as large-scale economic sanctions, since the latter do not imply such rapid and obvious negative consequences. In addition, the consequences of economic sanctions are not always interpreted by stakeholders as an “external shock”, but can often be framed as a routine policy. In this article, we attempt to generalize the existing theoretical explanations in the social sciences of the quality of adaptation of multi-level political systems to external shocks and assess their analytical capabilities for studying the adaptation of the Russian multi-level system to the consequences of economic sanctions in housing policy. The possibilities and limitations of using existing theories will be illustrated by the case of adaptation of the housing policy sphere in Russian regions to new economic conditions.

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