Ett varmare och i vissa regioner torrare klimat ökar risken för omfattande skogsbränder som hotar mänsklig säkerhet. Men extrema väderhändelser leder inte nödvändigtvis till att klimatförändringarna får ökad uppmärksamhet. Vad som sätts i fokus avgörs istället av hur händelsen ramas in. Studier av de omfattande skogsbränderna i Sverige 2014 och 2018 visar att orsakerna gärna definieras inom ramen för vad man lokalt kan påverka.
A policy entrepreneur is a distinct political actor aiming to affect change. The theoretical narrative regarding policy entrepreneurs is underpinned by their commitment to a policy solution, the multi-dimensional strategies they use to promote that solution, and a suite of attributes and skills facilitating their actions. Policy entrepreneurs reveal themselves through their attempts to transform policy ideas into policy innovations and, hence, disrupt status quo policy arrangements. Indeed, policy entrepreneurs share sensibilities with entrepreneurs in the market, whose conceptualisation serves as a heuristic for their counterparts in policy and politics. The emphasis on change borne out of innovative solutions distinguishes policy entrepreneurs from many other actors who aim to maintain current institutional settings and power relations. The growing scholarship on policy entrepreneurship assumes intentionality as inherent to the policy entrepreneur and their actions, foregrounding the image of the tenacious political actor set on steering their a priori pet policy to a suitable problem. This article draws from the market theory on entrepreneurship, contrasting proactive policy entrepreneurship (entrepreneurship by opportunity) and reactive policy entrepreneurship (entrepreneurship by necessity). We conduct a comparative social network analysis of three municipalities in southern Sweden focused on flood risk mitigation. We demonstrate two different logics of policy entrepreneurship (as a result of seizing opportunities versus as a reaction to vertical pressure), and we explore the consequences for enhancing our understanding of policy entrepreneurship
An emerging literature argues that street-level bureaucrats can develop and advocate for policy innovations that change policy in meaningful ways, calling this phenomenon “street-level policy entrepreneurship.” This argument is at the heart of the present special issue, which features contributions to developing the theoretical underpinnings of street-level policy entrepreneurship and empirically examining evidence for this phenomenon. While the traditional understanding of street-level bureaucrats views them as administrative functionaries, lacking motivation or resources for innovation, this new perspective recognizes that street-level officials' deep knowledge of a given policy domain and involved stakeholders uniquely positions these officials to advocate for policy innovations affecting the domain and its constituents. We urge scholars to take street-level policy entrepreneurship seriously and to examine questions at the frontiers of our knowledge about these entrepreneurial officials, including what motivates them, what strategies for policy advocacy they find most effective, and how their behaviors are shaped by different institutional contexts.
How do EU member states communicate risks to their citizens? In this study, we define risk communication as the information provided by different levels of government to citizens regarding possible future crises. The questions serving as departure points for this study are as follows: How is the administrative system for risk communication set up in the countries studied? How the different risk communication campaigns are (provided that they exist) embedded in the larger administrative context? How is risk communication strategy formulated in each country and what kind of threats are emphasized? In order to tackle these questions, we examine the risk communication strategy of eight countries: Sweden, Finland, Germany, England, France, Estonia, Greece and Cyprus. Our data consist of governmental web sites, publications, campaigns, as well as other modes of communication, such as videos posted on YouTube, with questions centering on institutional actors, methods of delivery, content, and effectiveness. We acknowledge that risk communication aims at supporting vulnerable populations and evening out imbalances, but at the same time we flesh out the power dimension of risk. In our analysis, we search for reproduction of norms and social inequality in risk communication practices. The results show that some patterns emerge regarding the way different EU countries convey information to the public, but they do not hold strictly to geography or administrative system. Digital media are the foremost vehicle of risk communication and the message generally conveyed is geared towards traditional, middle class households with the main language of the country as their first language. Volunteer organizations are present in all the countries in question, though not at the same degree. The conveyance of “self-protection” guidelines implicitly places the responsibility of protection to the individual. The results also show that in some countries, materiality has become more prevalent than the social dimension of risk in the message the public sector conveys, and that there is a move from focusing on risk to focusing on security.
In this paper, we examine how the demand of the citizens of Beirut for their ‘right to their city’ played out during the major popular uprising, which began on the 17th of October 2019. We focus on various forms of street art that had already been in place before the uprising as well as several pieces that emerged during the days following the beginning of the demonstrations. Our intent was to flesh out how drawing on the walls of the Lebanese capital manifested itself as a key activity through which people, regardless of sect and socioeconomic status, fought to improve their city and transform it into a space where leaders are corrupt-free, people’s living standards are improved, the environment is cleaner and human rights are respected. We conducted a group interview of Lebanese (street) artists to contextualize the city’s street art scene. The core materials for our study consist of 147 photographs of street art, taken during a week’s stay in Beirut in October 2019. We performed thematic narrative analysis on the material, revealing five distinct themes. All themes reflect demands for a ‘right to the city’ in nuanced ways. We fleshed them out with the use of at least one illustration per theme. While some images projected overt political slogans and art others transmitted their message in a subtler manner. We conclude that graffiti and other forms of street art are powerful means through which groups and individuals project their messages in order to assert their self-preservation and, ultimately, their ‘right to the city’ in contested urban spaces, where power differentials play out on political, social, and spatial levels.
In their efforts to affect policy change, policy entrepreneurs employ a series of strategies, which have been well documented in the literature. However, little is known regarding the relationship between the types of strategies policy entrepreneurs use and the institutional contexts in which they operate. The Interreg Europe programme aims to promote policy changes and thus offers a space for policy learning and experimentation to policy entrepreneurs. Using a mixed methodology that includes a survey addressed to the sixty-five Interreg Europe projects in research and innovation during the programming period 2014–20 and twelve follow-up semi-structured interviews, this article explores the strategies used by policy entrepreneurs in different institutional contexts. The study, rare in the policy entrepreneurship scholarship with its quantitative aspects, highlights the most widely-used strategies by policy entrepreneurs in research and innovation policy changes. Findings suggest that the strategy of storytelling is more widely used in high-innovator regions than in low-innovator regions and in Northern European regions compared to Southern European regions. Moreover, policy entrepreneurs who employ the storytelling strategy find it easier to introduce a policy change.
Dynamics of entrepreneurship have attracted growing attention from scholars of political science, policy studies, public administration and planning, as well as more recently, from the realms of international relations and foreign policy analysis. Under the banner of political entrepreneurship, this volume considers and maps out conceptual approaches to the study of entrepreneurship drawn from these fields, discusses synergies, envisages new analytical tools and offers contemporary empirical case studies, illustrating the diverse political contexts in which entrepreneurship takes place in the polis. Drawing upon an international cast of senior academics and cutting edge young researchers, the volume takes a closer look at key aspects of political entrepreneurship, such as, defining political entrepreneurs, how it relates to change, decision-making and strategies, organizational arrangements, institutional rules, varying contexts and future research agendas. By highlighting the political aspects of entrepreneurship, the volume presents new exciting opportunities for understanding entrepreneurial activities at regional, national and international levels. The volume will be of particular relevance to scholars and students of political science, policy studies, public administration, planning, international relations and business studies as well as practitioners interested in the nexus and utility of entrepreneurship in the modern-day political world.
Despite the malaise associated with climate change, in Polar Regions (e.g., Greenland and Northern Canada) many have cautiously argued that the general upswing in ocean temperatures can be deemed positive because it presents the opportunity for introducing new economic activities. In the case of Greenland, Motzfeldt (quoted in Nutall 2008: 46) has argued that though hunting activities may be negatively affected because of ice melting in coastal region, conditions are favourable for activities such as fishing or tourism. Greenland itself constitutes an interesting case study of the effects of global climate change on polar regions given its increasing autonomy from Denmark (Home Rule), however, the issue that emerges is whether the present growth-oriented development path with its emphasis on extractive activities (e.g., aluminium and goal mining) in the island’s interior and tourism especially in coastal areas constitutes a knee-jerk reaction. Furthermore, is this part of a bouncing forward process (Davoudi, 2012) increasing community resilience, and if so, whose resilience is actually increased? In this paper we focus on the tourism sector though we recognize that parallel investigations should also be conducted relating to the mining and other related activities. Using an evolutionary economic geography (EEG) lens we argue that the tourism sector is being introduced as a substitute to traditional activities (e.g., fishing and hunting). However, in order to fully comprehend the dynamics of this strategy, it is important to pursue a relational approach recognizing, for instance, historic forces as well as the political/institutional context (Carson and Carson 2016). Effectively, the current growth rhetoric focuses overwhelmingly on exogenously-controlled interests (e.g., multinational tour operators and cruise companies) at the expense of indigenous businesses. Our argument is that though effectively what is happening in Greenland could be summarized as an adaptation to vulnerability imposed by climate change the overall resilience of a locally spun tourism sector is severely compromised by the current rhetoric.
In 2006 the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce conducted an industrial real estate market survey as a follow-up to the 2002 analysis. The aim of the survey was to assess the manufacturing and warehouse profile of Springfield and compare it to national trends. Both the vacancy and rent rates are lower than the national average at 6.97 percent and $3.20 per square foot respectively. The typical industrial facility is just over 50,000 square feet and 18 years old, butSpringfield sustains a wide range of facility sizes and ages. A map, offered as Appendix C, provides a geographical representation of industrial real estate locations in Springfield.
Scholars in political science and policy studies have been paying increasing attention to a specific kind of actor, the policy entrepreneur, as an agent of change. Less attention has been paid to the contextual factors that may shape entrepreneurial action as most of the extant research is performed in pluralistic systems and in high complexity policy sectors. This is a study of a routine planning process in the municipality of ostersund in Northern Sweden with the purpose of studying the kind of actors that may act entrepreneurially (the who); the kind of strategies they use; and what contextual powers facilitate these strategies (the how). This two-and-a-half-year routine, low-complexity process was analyzed with in-depth interviews and a survey, participant observation, document analysis, and formal social network analysis. Findings suggest that professional administrators acted entrepreneurially by employing a set of six strategies while the members of civil society were central - though not entrepreneurial - participants.
This book explores the reasons behind the variation in national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, it furthers the policy studies scholarship through an examination of the effects of policy styles on national responses to the pandemic.
Despite governments being faced with the same threat, significant variation in national responses, frequently of contradictory nature, has been observed. Implications about responses inform a broader class of crises beyond this specific context. The authors argue that trust in government interacts with policy styles resulting in different responses and that the acute turbulence, uncertainty, and urgency of crises complicate the ability of policymakers to make sense of the problem. Finally, the book posits that unless there is high trust between society and the state, a decentralized response will likely be disastrous and concludes that while national responses to crises aim to save lives, they also serve to project political power and protect the status quo.
This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of public policy, public administration, political science, sociology, public health, and crisis management/disaster management studies.
Public policies affect all of us, regardless of who we are or where we live. The study of public policymaking necessarily entails the study of the entire political system and to this end, researchers employ a multitude of frameworks, theories, and models, which tend to be complementary rather than mutually exclusive. The focus of this dissertation is on political entrepreneurship as an actor-based framework to examine and understand policy change. The dissertation’s main aim is to conceptually enhance entrepreneurship and the entrepreneur in the polis by leveraging them in the Swedish political context. In this research, political entrepreneurship and the political entrepreneur are examined in the background of the Swedish corporatist policymaking system with its consensual sensibilities. The five (two theoretical and three empirical) papers as well as the cover essay comprising this dissertation attempt to answer the following questions: first, how do contextual factors inform the realization of entrepreneurial agency? Second, how do contextual factors inform the strategies entrepreneurial actors use to affect change? Third, what is the role of political entrepreneurship and the political entrepreneur in macro-level theories such as critical junctures and policy transfer? Contextual factors here are understood to be the general political system; the level of governance; the substantive policy sector, and the stage of the policy process. Predominantly qualitative methods and a variety of analytical tools, ranging from formal social network analysis (SNA) to process tracing are used to investigate the research questions in the national, regional, and local levels of governance and in the fields of crisis management, risk governance, and economic development respectively. Findings suggest that overwhelmingly, political entrepreneurs come from the ranks of public officials and thus political entrepreneurship is a feature of the policy implementation stage rather than the agenda setting stage of policymaking. There is not a place for the outsider, single issue entrepreneur in the Swedish consensual system, which provides for extensive inclusion, but of actors organized in interest groups. Political entrepreneurs are action-oriented, problem solving doers, characterized by perseverance and resourcefulness and are key in consolidating policy change in the aftermath of a crisis. Though in broad terms the strategies political entrepreneurs use in the Swedish context are concomitant with the ones used in pluralistic contexts, specificities diverge. In the Swedish corporatist consensual system, political entrepreneurship becomes a conduit facilitating interconnections among a multitude of actors; opens up additional channels of communication, while the political entrepreneur is a network maker. Finally, political entrepreneurship is focused on forging a consensus rather than winning the competition: the art of quiet cooperation and collaboration.
The Swedish response to the COVID‐19 pandemic is different not only to the response of other European countries, but also to other Scandinavian countries, which are geographically proximate and culturally similar. The question that emerges from an analysis of the Swedish case concerns the reasons why the country chose to take such a relatively liberal crisis response to the onset of the pandemic compared to the rest of Europe. In this paper, I treat the national response to the pandemic as the outcome variable, which I seek to explain through an analysis of the intersection of dualism in the model of Swedish public administration and the devolved governance system that bestows operational autonomy on public agencies and local public authorities. The duality that characterizes the relationship between politics, policy, and administration in Sweden resulted in a response that was necessarily decentralized. The decentralized response in conjunction with high political trust among the citizenry necessitated, and was conducive to, broad guidelines. I conclude the article with a discussion placing the Swedish response in perspective for further comparative research.
The object of policy research is the understanding of the interaction among the machinery of the state, political actors, and the public. To facilitate this understanding, a number of complementary theories have developed in the course of more than two decades. This article reviews recent scholarship on the established theories of the policy process, mostly published in 2011 and 2012. Additionally, scholarship extending these theories is identified and new theories of policy process are discussed. This review finds that the established theories have generated substantive scholarship during the period under review and have also been the springboard for much of the recent thinking in policy research.
Policy (or political) entrepreneurship (PE) is an actor-based framework to examine and understand policy change. Rooted in Kingdon’s (1984/2003) Multiple Streams approach (MSA), the policy entrepreneur is defined as âa special kind of actor, embedded in the sociopolitical fabric, who is alert to opportunities and acts upon them; he or she amasses coalitions for the purpose of effecting change in a substantive policy sector, political rules or in the provision of public goodsâ (Petridou, Narbutaité Aflaki, and Miles, 2015, p. 1). Political entrepreneurship refers to the agentic capacity of political actors operationalized as (i) access to resources such as information and personal contacts; (ii) alertness to recognize opportunities and take advantage of them; (iii) the willingness to take risks, and (iv) leadership skills. The strategies these actors use to navigate the policymaking process are a function of their agentic capacity and the context in which they find themselves operating. Though considerable scholarship has been devoted to policy entrepreneurs in the policy formulation stage of the policy process, entrepreneurship in bureaucracies and especially at the municipal level becomes more opaque (Petridou, 2018; Petridou and Sparf, 2018). In this study, we conduct a structural analysis to compare the networks in two Swedish municipalities, Lomma and Staffanstorp in urban flook risk management (for a study on Lomma, see Becker, 2018). Our findings suggest that the actions of the policy entrepreneur in Lomma municipality is decisive for the policy decisions regarding flood risk mitigation.
This article examines the role of policy entrepreneurs in promoting change in flood risk mitigation at the local level in Sweden through a comparative study of two Swedish municipalities with different approaches to flood risk governance; as a technical issue or a social issue. The municipality in which flood risk mitigation is addressed as a social issue exhibits a larger size of the network mitigating flood risk, more diverse actors involved, and a more central location of the politicians and senior management. Moreover, the analysis points to the salience of a bureaucratic policy entrepreneur in promoting this shift toward addressing it as a social issue, and shows how they use relational strategies to frame the issue as relating to climate change action. The article operationalizes sociability and credibility, two of the attributes of policy entrepreneurs, and thus, contributes to the theoretical and methodological discussion of policy entrepreneurs in general, and as they pertain to environmental policy in particular.
How do European Union (EU) member states communicate risks to their citizens? In this study, we define risk communication as the information provided by different levels of government to citizens regarding possible future crises to which the general public might be subjected. We seek to answer the following questions: Are there any patterns in the risk communication strategies among EU member states in terms of the sender of information, the message conveyed, the method used, and the intended audience? Finally, to what extent is the state involved in ensuring the safety of its citizens? To tackle these questions, we examine the risk communication strategy of eight countries: Sweden, Finland, Germany, England, France, Estonia, Greece, and Cyprus. Our data consist of governmental web sites, publications, campaigns, and other modes of communication, such as videos posted on YouTube, with questions centering on institutional actors, methods of delivery, content, and effectiveness. We find that the institutional architecture of risk communication aligns with the broad administrative system of each member state. Countries tend to focus on risks that are specific to their context, with Sweden and, to a lesser extent, Germany having a special focus on consequences and providing guidelines to the public on how to survive for a certain period of time in the absence of the state. Especially in Sweden, though the state is a salient actor in risk communication through the dissemination of information at the agency level, the state retreats while urging the resilient citizen to take control of his or her own crisis management.
Socio-economic cohesion has been a foundational overarching objective of the European Union. The European Union’s recent enlargement, not to mention the worldwide economic downturn, persisting asymmetries of globalization and deindustrialization have deepened existing cleavages and accentuated persisting effects of unbalanced development. The mainstreaming of the sustainability concept and the ascendance of creativity and innovation as regional development tools have caused municipalities and regions to explore ‘soft’ strategies aimed at fostering culture and creativity in order to revive their image and their economies. A shift in the thinking about cohesion policy after the publication of the Fifth Cohesion Report in November 2010 has signalled the need for European municipalities and regions to focus on bottom-up strategies so as to compliment top-down redistributional arrangements as paths towards regional development. This article focuses on the concept of territorial cohesion as spatial justice and its implications for the sparsely populated Swedish northern periphery. The aim of this study was to investigate the value of cultural industries (CIs) as a regional policy tool in the periphery in the context of justice, sustainability and the three dimensions of territorial cohesion: territorial identity, territorial efficiency and territorial quality. Findings suggest that viewing CIs as tools towards regional development in the periphery follows the tenets of (spatial) justice, sustainability and the dimensions of territorial cohesion.
In this article, we examine public policy change at the local level of governance in the aftermath of an extraordinary event. Using the case study of a Swedish municipality after the sweeping forest fire of 2014, we contend that policy entrepreneurship, like its market counterpart, may under certain conditions take on a wider range of behaviors that are not underpinned by the proactive quest for opportunities. Rather, a sense of urgency and necessity, professional norms, and some keen technical skills make for a different kind of entrepreneurship, which we label reactive policy entrepreneurship.
The study of policy entrepreneurs as agents of change has developed greatly in recent years, supported by increasingly more sophisticated theoretical and empirical research. In this article, we first consider how the concept of the policy entrepreneur can be integrated into broader theories of the policy process, with particular focus on the compatibility of the concept with the narrative policy framework. We then propose that further empirical research on policy entrepreneurs focus on five tasks:(1) Delimiting policy entrepreneurs as a distinct class of actor; (2) investigating contextual factors that encourage the emergence of policy entrepreneurs; (3) further specifying the strategies policy entrepreneurs deploy; (4) improving the measurement of the impact policy entrepreneurs have in the policy process; and (5) identifying when policy entrepreneurs prompt widescale change. New theoretical and empirical contributions along these lines could do much to advance our understanding of agency and structure in contemporary politics.
Central to policies relating to risk governance at the regional and local levels is the interactions between the public and private sectors also referred to as networked governance. At the same time, the role of political actors in general and policy entrepreneurs in particular in terms of policy change has gained considerable traction in recent policy scholarship. The purpose of this study was to investigate the change in governance arrangements resulting in the formation of a coordination network in regional flood risk management—the first of its kind in Sweden. Our research is guided by the following questions: first, would the policy change (the establishment of the networks) have taken place if a policy entrepreneur were not part of the policy transfer process? Second, what is the role of policy entrepreneurship in the implementation of the policy after its nationwide adoption? Third, what other factors played a role in the variation of the results in the implemented policy that is, the enforced networks? We find the role of a policy entrepreneur key in the policy transfer from the regional to the national level. In order to investigate the resultant networks, we draw from B. Guy Peters (1998) and his conceptualization of factors which affect the politics of coordination. In addition to the presence of a policy entrepreneur, we compare: (i) pluriformity of network members; (ii) member interdependence; (iii) redundancy of structures, and (iv) degree of formality (in terms of meetings). Our findings suggest that entrepreneurs contribute to the variation in the functionality of the enforced river groups, though other factors play a significant role as well. Most importantly, perhaps, we did not identify entrepreneurs in any of the river groups which were not functional.
Following its achievement of Self-Rule status in 2009 Greenland embarked on a series of measures to diversify its economy with an eye towards eventually gaining full independence from Denmark. Tourism was underlined as a key sector for reaching this goal and, consequently, over the last few years there has been a concerted effort to develop the island as an important polar destination. Significantly, the Greenlandic government created the tourism development policy for 2016-2020, which it views as a key instrument for shaping the sector’s future. In this paper, we adopted a policy network approach to determine the relational architecture among various stakeholders from the public and private sectors who are seen as relevant to tourism’s development. Inter alia, we examined how these actors were linked to each other while examining what kind of tourism networks existed in Greenland and what obstacles might hinder or foster their formation. A thematic analysis of qualitative data on Atlas.ti reveals that though there exist networks in the Greenlandic tourism sector, they are not policy networks and that the Greenlandic government’s approach to developing this tourism policy has been top-down, reflecting a ‘government’ rather than a ‘governance’ approach. Barriers to the formation of policy networks included lack of a shared image for the future; lack of trust among actors; lack of time and spatial fragmentation hindering iterative interactions, and lack of institutional enabling of information and knowledge sharing.
This study focuses on the bureaucratic reforms in Sweden which resulted in the creation of the Secretariat for Crisis Management and the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency. We investigate the mechanisms that lead to divergent change through the critical juncture analytical approach. The study’s findings suggest that the bureaucratic reforms were the result of the critical juncture between 2001 and 2009, which included, inter alia, the release of a commission of inquiry report, a major political crisis and a national election. Moreover, we situate entrepreneurial agency in this analysis while we contribute to the theorization of institutional entrepreneurship by focusing on the implementation stage of institutional change. In order to overcome the institutional resistance stemming from an attempt to preserve the existing power structures, institutional entrepreneurs use the following three strategies: (i) the strategy of listening; (ii) the strategy of advertising early success and (iii) the strategy of picking up the phone.
The Swedish model of policy making consists of (1) an extensive and universal system for social protection, (2) political compromises based on pragmatism and (3) a wide use of expert knowledge in the formulation of public policies. The results have been very positive when it comes to the standard measures of human well-being. Even though Sweden faired quite well compared with other European countries, the high level of mortality among the elderly during the pandemic has been a much discussed weakness of the country’s handling of the pandemic. This chapter addresses the rationale underpinning the Swedish pandemic response including divergences from comparable countries as well as implications of this approach for the Swedish model of policy making.
Experiments have long been recognized as effective tools in teaching natural sciences and, to a lesser degree, in social sciences. However, understanding the role of immersive simulation experiments in undergraduate degree programmes demands more scholarly attention, given the pace of technological advances and research literacy in immersive simulation. The purpose of this article is to illustrate the potential of integrating immersive simulation laboratory experiments in social science education and specifically in a risk and crisis management undergraduate degree programme. Based on the work of Claire Dunlop, we demonstrate how an experiment with a high degree of experimental realism was a fruitful vehicle for initiating conversations about sensitive subjects in a safe environment and made teaching more inclusive, while high mundane realism made teaching risk and crisis management fun, and, we argue, fostered practical aspects of risk and crisis management.
The concept of resilience is multidimensional, multiscalar, and contextualized, whereas global shifts ripple down to the local level, creating tangible consequences for local communities. In this chapter, we investigate how resilient processes play out in the context of emergency preparedness in three Swedish municipalities and thus examine the understanding of risk, through the concept of resilience in an advanced Western democracy. Our case studies were three municipalities spanning the demographic gamut of Swedish local authorities (Malmö, Arboga, and Örebro) in the broad empirical areas of climate change adaptation, migration, and violent extremism. We conducted a qualitative, inductive analysis with the aid of Atlas.ti on group interviews with stakeholders from the local authority and NGOs in all municipalities and empirical areas. With our analysis focusing on similarities across local authorities and empirical areas, we found that resilience as a concept is not yet integrated in the everyday operations of the local authorities, which instead work with the concept of sustainability. What is more, dominant themes that emerge across the board when it comes to emergency preparedness are collaboration, legitimacy, power relations, and projectification of work.
In this article, we investigate the leadership response to the COVID‐19 pandemic crisis in Greece and Sweden based on the strategic leadership framework put forth by Boin, 't Hart, Stern and Sundelius. We seek to understand the contextual (institutional, administrative and political) factors explaining the differences in stringency of measures and centralization of response in Greece and Sweden, respectively. What trade‐offs did public leaders implement between effectiveness and efficiency to successfully manage the crisis? We find that reliance on expertise plays out differently in centralized and decentralized structure, while a salient lesson drawn for practitioners is that there is more than one path to successful crisis leadership response contingent on institutional capacity, bureaucratic autonomy and political system. The article concludes with implications for leadership response during crises and practical lessons for crisis managers.
Using ‘t Hart's (2014) typology of crises, we explore the Republic of Cyprus's initial response to the COVID‐19 crisis and contend Cypriot leaders indirectly drew lessons from the Chinese experience to prevent a situational crisis from metastasizing into a much broader institutional crisis. The lessons Cyprus drew from China to secure this outcome reinforced the critical nature of transparency and timeliness in sharing epidemiological information, swift intervention efforts to minimize virus transmission, and privileging expert involvement in shaping the response plan. We conclude with implications for public leadership and lesson‐drawing under crisis.
Creativity has become a popular strategy for promoting the innova-tions and ideas behind economic growth (Richards 2011; Ray 1998). The urban-centric rhetoric behind creativity is, however, problematic when theoretically and practically applied to peripheral spaces despite instances of emerging creativity in the countryside and small cities in peripheral regions (Cloke 2006; Gibson 2010). Overall, rural cultural and creative clusters face many developmental challenges because they are peripheral with respect to global markets, happenings, and publics (Andersen 2010; Gibson, Luckman, and Willoughby-Smith 2010). Thus, various scholars have called for policies and theories that take into account the nature of creativity and networking in rural areas, while concurrently avoiding urban-centric rhetoric as a means of studying, planning, and assessing the success of rural clusters (Cole 2008; Fløysand and Jakobsen 2007).
Effective collaborations in emergency management is the Holy Grail for practitioners in Sweden and elsewhere. More than mere coordination, interorganizational collaboration is deemed by many as the most optimal arrangement to share resources and respond to emergencies more quickly and efficiently. It is also considered to be the source of a broadly and rather vaguely defined concept of greater good. Such collaborations tend to be uncritically accepted as innovative, especially in instances of large-scale disasters or planned events while routine emergency management arrangements tend to be under researched. This research is an in-depth case study of an interorganizational collaboration in the greater Stockholm region in Sweden concerning routine emergency management. The collaboration comprises the physical relocation of one operator each from seven organizations in the area and the establishment of the “Collaboration Cluster”. Rather than attempt to define the concept of “greater good” we set out to evaluate the quality of collaboration from the perspective of each member organization. We build a multi-dimensional model to assess the expectations of each organization at the political, managerial, and operative level. What is more, we view the Collaboration Cluster as a network at the operative level and for this reason we employ formal Social Network Analysis (SNA) to tease out network variables that have an effect on the quality of collaboration.