Mid Sweden University

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

Purpose: The aim of this study is to examine how personnel from different organizations create meaning and intend to act in a potential dangerous situation. Design/methodology: The article rests upon an experiment, showing a movie with a bomb at the entrance of a retirement center. The task of the participants was to describe the situation and decide how to act in different situations. The participants involve was personnel from different kinds of organizations. Findings: Our findings show that there are different kinds of understanding of the situation and how to act, that could be explained by the logic of the organizational field, professional knowledge and the person's earlier experience. Originality/value: While most studies have been focusing on the interaction between emergency organizations alone, this study has investigated the sense making and acting of emergency organizations and other non-emergency organization. Most studies are also conducted either as retrospective interviews after a crisis or during training exercise. This study rest upon an experiment, were the subjects had to interpret the situation and decide how to act in real time.

Knowledge about disasters, emergencies, and other extreme situations is produced through outputs from research, lived experiences and social processes. The knowledge, however, is rarely analyzed from a philosophical point of view that is, the kind of knowledge being (re)produced and to what end is unproblematized. This is partly a methodological problem as extreme situations are often hard to study in real time because they are dangerous, uncertain, and complex. By finding new ways of studying extreme situations we can gain insight into new perspectives and produce novel kinds of knowledge. 

Syftet med denna rapport har varit att studera den sektorsövergripande samverkan som sker mellan räddningsorganisationer och organisationer vars verksamhet är att ha omsorg om äldre eller barn, när dessa organisationer möts under en räddningsinsats. Resultatet visar att sektorsövergripande samverkan försvåras av att det i mötet mellan dessa organisationer saknas kunskap om de rutiner som styr den plats där händelsen sker och förståelse för den uppkomna situationen. Vidare att ansvaret för räddningsinsatsen ofta helt lämnas över till räddningsorganisationerna.

• Vid sektorsövergripande krishantering har de ingående organisationerna kunskap om olika faktorer under händelsen. Organisationer utan krishanteringsvana kan ha svårt att förstå situationen när en kris drabbar deras organisation. Däremot har de kunskap om platsens förutsättningar. Räddningsorganisationer har inte alltid kunskap om platsens förutsättningar när de kommer till en skadeplats, däremot kan situationen var känd och något de ofta möter.

• Uppgiften att avhjälpa själva krisen till exempel släcka en brand, har räddningsorganisationerna erfarenhet av. Uppgifter relaterade till platsen, till exempel att möta de behov som barn och äldre har och de rationaliteter som gäller den här typen av arbete, har omsorgsorganisationerna kunskap om. Den organisationsknutna kunskapen delas dock inte över sektorerna.

• Omsorgsorganisationer och räddningsorganisationer utgår från olika logiker i sitt arbete. Omsorgsorganisationer har sällan krishanteringsvana när det gäller ordinära kriser och de utgår i sitt arbete från en omsorgslogik med fokus på värnandet om elever eller äldre; räddningsorganisationer utgår i sitt arbete från kommunikativ eller incidentkontrollerande logik och ofta ser de krisen som en vardagskris. Detta gör att personalen vid de olika organisationerna förstår samma händelse på olika sätt.

• Vid en händelse är det inte ovanligt att de olika organisationerna inte samverkar under krisen utan att var och en gör sitt och anpassar sin verksamhet enbart till händelsen.

Forskargruppen KRIHS, Kris och risk i det heterogena samhället, har fått uppdraget att skriva en kunskapsöversikt inom ramen för MSB:s verksamhetsområden skydd mot olyckor, krishantering och civil beredskap. Uppdraget har gjorts i samarbete med Eva-Lena Demarin som stått för stora delar av sammanställningen av tidigare forskning samt delar av övriga avsnitt. Undertecknad ansvarar för översiktens vetenskapliga kvalitet. Kunskapsöversikten är dock ett resultat av forskargruppens gemensamma ansträngningar. Tillsammans med Eva-Lena har gruppen träffats vid fem tillfällen varav vid ett seminarium där texten diskuterats och reviderats. De som varit med och diskuterat, samlat in material och/eller skrivit delar av översikten är förutom ovan nämnda, Erna Danielsson, Sara Ekholm, Linda Eliasson, Roine Johansson, Jörgen Sparf, Erika Wall och Susanna Öhman.

Då både tiden och utrymmet har varit begränsat gör vi inga anspråk på att kunskapsöversikten är heltäckande. Den ska snarare ses som en ganska grovkorning bild av de senaste tio årens risk- och krisforskning rörande uppfattningar, kommunikation och organisation. Det huvudsakliga bidraget är att översikten identifierar vissa områden där kunskapsuppbyggnad behövs. På så sätt kan översikten ses som en karta där vissa kompassriktningar markerats utifrån vilka MSB kan välja vilka som passar myndighetens framtida verksamhet.

This paper is based on the results of a survey on “Interdisciplinary working in disaster resilience” conducted by the WP4 work group of the ANDROID Network. The survey had the aim of gathering information on the state of art and practice in the field of disaster resilience and promoting co-operation and interdisciplinary methodologies in research and education. The survey has been carried out by means of a questionnaire focusing on disaster-resilience projects and on the main challenges faced in interdisciplinary working. The results of the questionnaire, which collected 57 answers from more than 20 European countries and few extra European countries as well, allow for three main considerations: i) projects involved 5 different disciplines as average and geography and sociology were present in the majority of the projects; ii) the level of interconnection between disciplines seems intermediate, meaning that information and methods are exchanged, but a full integration of methods and concepts into a common shared language and system of axioms is missing; iii) the lack of a common framework and common terminology represents a major barrier to good interdisciplinary work. The results highlight the role played in disaster-resilience design by social and cultural aspects, which are instead not often adequately considered in the practice. The establishment of an education on resilient design of urban system, which includes both social and technological aspects, emerges as a possible solution to overcome barriers to interdisciplinary work and improve the efficacy and quality of resilience design.

Large scale projects tasked with designing infrastructures and urban networks resilient to disasters face a common challenge, i.e. the need to address concomitant technological issues and social problems. What is more, conflicting technologies and the diverse philosophical underpinnings of distinct academic disciplines pose difficulties in the collaboration among experts of different fields. These difficulties and possible ways to tackle them have been highlighted by a questionnaire developed in the framework of an EU project named ANDROID (Academic Network for Disaster Resilience to Optimize Educational Development). More specifically, the project investigated the level of interdisciplinary work in current research and educational projects within the field of disaster resilience. Findings illustrate the number and types of disciplines involved in disaster resilience projects and suggest that a higher degree of integration between different disciplines in tertiary education could promote a transdisciplinary approach to disaster resilience, resulting in design efficiency and innovation.

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 “a 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 goods” (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.

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.

Det senmoderna samhällets komplexitet har gjort organisationers riskhantering till en viktig men svårstrukturerad aktivitet. I en förstudie (Sparf, 2004) har en riskhanteringsmetod utifrån sociologisk systemteori utarbetats (STRIM). I föreliggande uppsats är syftet dels att ge en bild av och exempel på hur riskhantering kan gå till i teori och praktik och dels att testa den empiriska giltigheten hos STRIM. De bakomliggande systemteorierna rekapituleras och därtill har teorier om riskhantering lagts. Den empiriska undersökningen har utgjorts främst av två intervjuomgångar med fem informanter i varje. Resultatet ger en fyllig bild av praktisk riskhantering, men uppfyller bara delvis prövningen av STRIM. Den viktigaste slutsatsen är att instrumentella och administrativa riskhanteringsmetoder respektive processer och enstaka insatser i praktiken har svårt att mötas. Dessa problem kan STRIM förmodligen bidra till att överbrygga genom skapandet av en gemensam nomenklatur.

Det senmoderna samhällets komplexitet har gjort organisationers riskhantering till en viktig men svårstrukturerad aktivitet. I en förstudie (Sparf, 2004) har en riskhanteringsmetod utifrån sociologisk systemteori utarbetats (STRIM). I föreliggande uppsats är syftet dels att ge en bild av och exempel på hur riskhantering kan gå till i teori och praktik och dels att testa den empiriska giltigheten hos STRIM. De bakomliggande systemteorierna rekapituleras och därtill har teorier om riskhantering lagts. Den empiriska undersökningen har utgjorts främst av två intervjuomgångar med fem informanter i varje. Resultatet ger en fyllig bild av praktisk riskhantering, men uppfyller bara delvis prövningen av STRIM. Den viktigaste slutsatsen är att instrumentella och administrativa riskhanteringsmetoder respektive processer och enstaka insatser i praktiken har svårt att mötas. Dessa problem kan STRIM förmodligen bidra till att överbrygga genom skapandet av en gemensam nomenklatur.

Definitions and assessments of social vulnerability are commonly based on systemic relations and processes on a macro level. There is a danger of ascribing vulnerability to someone, regardless of their individual circumstances and personal abilities, thus micro-level information regarding everyday life is also needed. Experiences of risk and attitudes towards vulnerability were explored in five group interviews with a total of 27 disabled individuals. In the contexts of instrumental aids, bodily endurance, and external causes, vulnerability was found to be a ubiquitous primer in everyday decision-making regarding activity attendance and displaying disabilities. The disabled individual’s interpretative framework for risk and vulnerability is shaped by objectifying his / her own body, and by being accustomed to everything taking a long time. The interpretative framework helps in decision-making and in managing any ‘contextual inertia’ involved in stressful situations. By showing how everyday life, individual conditions, and social circumstances are all strictly interconnected, the importance of adapting assessments of vulnerability to the type of study and analysis is highlighted.

Innehåll: Sociala resurser, Funktionshinder - definition och antal, Samhälle och värderingar 2005 - funktionshinder

The aim of this study is to investigate the types of physical and social factors that may reduce individuals' ability to take responsibility for their own security. The study specifically focused on groups that are likely to have limited ability. A review of the state-of-the-art of both academic and professional literature was conducted. Interviews were carried out with participants from some especially vulnerable groups as well as with researchers and professionals from different administrative levels. The literature shows that on an individual level the total amount of financial resources, health and social connections are the most influencing factors for the individual's ability to take responsibility for their own safety. Aspects that should be taken into account in mitigation work are: exposure to risk, living space and social response. The latter referring to the individual's financial resources, health and social network as well as any community and societal support in relation to a hazard. It is also important to work with different time horizons. Two examples of functionalist models are presented as well as three additional models that adopt a broader perspective on many areas of life. The interviews show that the psychological aspects of attention-direction and a low stress threshold are decisive in how individuals handle different situations and how they can take responsibility for their safety. The social aspects concern stable welfare services, kinship, personal finances, accommodations, ICT and social stress. A key conclusion from the study is that a holistic approach, which complements the existing functional approach, is urgently needed in order to understand the issue of the ability to take responsibility for individual safety. A holistic model could also be applied in practical work aiming to strengthen the ability of especially vulnerable groups to take responsibility for their own safety.

To address increasingly complex social problems and provide more effective public goods, governments turn to multi-organizational arrangements, often with a limited life span. Carrying out work in project form allows public bureaucracies flexibility and gives space for innovative and experimental solutions to long-standing problems. Temporary multi-organizations (TMOs) are common in the construction and building industries but more opaque are the mechanisms governing them in the public sector. This is a case study of such a TMO in the broader Stockholm region in the field of emergency management. The research questions guiding this study are: (i) what added value does the TMO contribute to the provision of routine emergency management; and (ii) what are the organizational consequences for each constituent member of the TMO? Finally, (iii) how do participants organizations balance the collective benefit of the TMO vs the costs individually incurring to each of them? I construct an analytical framework of perceived added value of the TMO on the one hand and organizational consequences on the other. Findings suggest that the TMO is insulated, with the knowledge produced in it staying within the confines of the project. The participating organizations, though recognizing the high normative value of collaboration, tend to focus more on the consequences the TMO has on each of them, rather than the added value it conveys to them and the provision of emergency management as a whole. 

Olika krisövningar har blivit en allt vanligare katastrofriskreducerande metod, både i Sverige och internationellt sett. Målet är att aktörerna ska öva förmågan att minska konsekvenserna av en katastrof, att leda sin egen verksamhet vid en kris och att samverka med andra aktörer. Att stimulera kunskap och övning kan därför sägas vara en del i att stärka samhällets resiliens. I det här kapitlet problematiseras detta antagande genom att undersöka vilka slags kunskaper som behöver skapas och överföras i strävan mot ett katastrofresilient samhälle, och huruvida krisövningar är en lämplig form för detta. Man kan exempelvis ställa sig frågan om övningarna förbättrar organisationers resiliens när de iscensätter verklighetsnära, och således förutsägbara, händelser? Detta mot bakgrund att många av de katastrofscenarier som inträffat på riktigt under 2000-talet har framstått som fullständigt osannolika – vilket kanske visar att vi inte kan öva oss till att bli mer resilienta?

Innehåll: Governmentality, Organisationer, institutioner och riskhantering, Makten att hantera risker

In many cases immobilized people are highly vulnerable in crises, mainly due to physical obstacles but also due to dependency on medication and technical or social systems, such as security alarm and home care service. The aim of this study is to seek understanding of what impact social resources and experience of crises has on the behaviour of immobilized people during infrastructural crises. The data was collected in two municipalities in three steps (n=100): first by a survey concerning actual social resources, second another survey on presumptive behaviour in a crisis situation (stimuli = scenario) and, thirdly, by interviews of respondents. The results were crosschecked with survey data on a national scale comparing other groups on the same level of social resources. Preliminary results show that social resources, as well as risk experience, have an impact on both risk perception and risk behaviour among immobilized people.

The aim of this paper is to study the connection between social resources of disabled and their risk perception. A national survey was conducted in Sweden in 2005 to measure general risk perception using a random sample of 2 000 inhabitants. The results shows that disabled people in some respects are more risk aware than average and that there is a close relation between risk perception and social resources. This implies that structural resources are more significant for disabled persons.

Innehåll: Vad är ett socialt system, Hur avgränsas sociala system, Risk och systemteori enligt Niklas Luhmann

Det senmoderna samhällets komplexitet och höggradiga differentiering har gjort risker alltmer svåranalyserade, vilket har lett till att sociala system måste ha en förändringsförmåga för att överleva. Det normala riskanalysarbetet i sociala system (exempelvis företag och organisationer) görs på den nivå eller i de interna sektorer där riskerna slår igenom. Uppsatsen ger exempel på befintliga riskhanteringsmodeller för detta och presenterar författarens egen, mer övergripande modell, konstruerad utifrån de tre systemteoretiska begreppen AGIL, autopoiesis och feedback loops. Modellen illustrerar en dialog mellan systemets definitioner, behov och omvärld samt andra system. Uppsatssyftet är att belysa sociala systems förändringsförmåga och beredskap för riskhantering samt hur de genom att använda modellen kan förbättra dessa. Uppsatsen är en litteraturstudie av sociologisk systemteori (funktionalism) och den framlagda modellen är på grund av abstraktionsnivån behäftad med problem rörande den praktiska tillämpningen.

Det senmoderna samhällets komplexitet och höggradiga differentiering har gjort risker alltmer svåranalyserade, vilket har lett till att sociala system måste ha en förändringsförmåga för att överleva. Det normala riskanalysarbetet i sociala system (exempelvis företag och organisationer) görs på den nivå eller i de interna sektorer där riskerna slår igenom. Uppsatsen ger exempel på befintliga riskhanteringsmodeller för detta och presenterar författarens egen, mer övergripande modell, konstruerad utifrån de tre systemteoretiska begreppen AGIL, autopoiesis och feedback loops. Modellen illustrerar en dialog mellan systemets definitioner, behov och omvärld samt andra system. Uppsatssyftet är att belysa sociala systems förändringsförmåga och beredskap för riskhantering samt hur de genom att använda modellen kan förbättra dessa. Uppsatsen är en litteraturstudie av sociologisk systemteori (funktionalism) och den framlagda modellen är på grund av abstraktionsnivån behäftad med problem rörande den praktiska tillämpningen.

Theories of policy processes are typically underpinned by assumptions of bounded rationality in which only a fraction of the available information on a policy issue can be absorbed, comprehended, included, and communicated by any given policy community. From a scientific point of view, this boundedness is convenient, as it helps policy process scholars identify actors, define the problem, and frame a narrative. The problem is that some of the major current policy issues, such as climate change, food production, and migration, are wicked problems that cannot be resolved within limited boundedness—they are simply too big and globally interconnected. A question that comes to mind is to what extent existing policy-process theories are equipped to analyse such significant policy challenges. This paper discusses some of the inherent conceptual and operationalisation challenges in the study of wicked problems and policy processes. On the empirical side, I pay particular attention to administrative, political, and technical aspects characterising wicked problems as well as challenges related to public expectations and communication. As an illustration, I use ongoing work for the UN on the uptake of scientific knowledge in policies on disaster risk reduction.

A majority of the public risk and crisis management in Sweden has recently been relocated from the national level to the local. The local municipal administration hence has been forced to integrate this new responsibility with existing services. One such service is the local healthcare administering the care for disabled people and the elderly. A research project consisting of four quantitative and qualitative empirical studies examined (1) the perception and sense making of risk and crises among disabled people and (2) the organizing of risk and crisis management within the local administration. The purpose of the project was to gain knowledge about the relational properties of the municipality and disabled inhabitants regarding risk and crisis. The results from the studies show that the influence from social capital on risk perception is significant for disabled people and that disabled people constantly apply risk remedial strategies in everyday life. The local authorities have so far not been able to integrate the risk and crisis management with the healthcare sector and the healthcare sector is not well prepared in terms of training and knowledge. Further, the framing of risks and crises differs significantly between different positions within the health care administration. The conclusions from the project are that the relocation of the public risk and crisis management are victimized by auditory subjugation and that the organizational integration suffers from cultural divergence and disconnection between different departments. The conclusions point at a need to balance the risk and crisis management with knowledge from a bottom-up perspective and to strengthen the organizational capabilities of considering the vulnerabilities and capabilities in risks and crises among a heterogeneous collection of welfare recipients. 

A majority of the public risk and crisis management in Sweden has recently been relocated from the national level to the local. The local municipal administration hence has been forced to integrate this new responsibility with existing services. One such service is the local healthcare administering the care for disabled people and the elderly. A research project consisting of four quantitative and qualitative empirical studies examined the perception and sense making of risk and crises among disabled people and the organizing of risk and crisis management within the local administration. The purpose of the project was to gain knowledge about the relational properties of the municipality and disabled inhabitants regarding risk and crisis. The results from the studies show that the influence from social capital on risk perception is significant for disabled people and that disabled people constantly apply risk remedial strategies in everyday life. The local authorities have so far not been able to integrate the risk and crisis management with the healthcare sector and the healthcare sector is not well prepared in terms of training and knowledge. Further, the framing of risks and crises differs significantly between different positions within the health care administration. The conclusions from the project are that the relocation of the public risk and crisis management are victimized by unclear regulation and that the organizational integration suffers from cultural divergence and disconnection between different departments. The conclusions point at a need to balance the risk and crisis management with knowledge from a bottom-up perspective and to strengthen the organizational capacity of considering the individual vulnerabilities and capabilities in risks and crises among a heterogeneous collection of welfare receivers. 

 A majority of the public risk and crisis management in Sweden has recently been relocated from the national level to the local. The local municipal administration hence has been forced to integrate this new responsibility with existing services. One such service is the local healthcare administering the care for disabled people and the elderly. A research project consisting of four quantitative and qualitative empirical studies examined (1) the perception and sense making of risk and crises among disabled people and (2) the organising of risk and crisis management within the local administration. The purpose of the project was to gain knowledge about the relational properties of the municipality and disabled inhabitants regarding risk and crisis. The results from the studies show that the influence from social capital on risk perception is significant for disabled people and that disabled people constantly apply risk remedial strategies in everyday life. The local authorities have so far not been able to integrate the risk and crisis management with the healthcare sector and the healthcare sector is not well prepared in terms of training and knowledge. Further, the framing of risks and crises differs significantly between different positions within the health care administration. The conclusions from the project are that the relocation of the public risk and crisis management are victimised by unclear regulation auditory subjugation and that the organisational integration suffers from cultural divergence and disconnection between different departments. The conclusions point at a need to balance the risk and crisis management with knowledge from a bottom-up perspective and to strengthen the organisational capabilities capacity of considering the individual vulnerabilities and capabilities in risks and crises among a heterogeneous collection of welfare receivers.

The Swedish system for civil protection and preparedness has undergone fundamental shifts in legislation, organisation, and responsibility since the 1990s. Most prominently, the responsibility for municipals has increased and the system has become more dependent on actors in the local community. Individuals have also become integral actors in the system with increased responsibility. The guiding principles for this system, formulated by the national authorities, are responsibility, similarity, and proximity. These principles prescribe that disruptions in any regular operations shall be handled by the structure already in place. This means that disturbances or crises, for instance within the local healthcare, should be solved by the regular personnel. The combination of the new location of responsibility and the guiding principles locate the issues of safety and security at the interface between the single individual and the organisation. The aim of this dissertation is to gain knowledge about the relationship between people with disability and the municipal administrative function for civil protection and preparedness regarding safety and security. Four empirical investigations from Sweden are included. The first is a quantitative study investigating the risk perception among disabled people and whether this perception can be explained by their disability. The three remaining studies are qualitative, studying respectively: how risk and vulnerability are manifested, experienced, and managed in everyday life by disabled persons; how local authorities arrange civil protection and preparedness at the local level, and how an uncertain, adverse event was managed at different levels of the local health care. The two studies with disabled persons shows that trust is central to understand how risk perception is shaped and that the safety in everyday life is important. Individuals develop certain strategies in order to deal with vulnerability. The strategies include avoiding certain situations; to show or not to show their needs, and being accustomed to everything taking a long time. These strategies form a framework for interpretation of safety and security where the body is objectified as a social representation. The body thus is comparable to any other social representation and can be subject for defence, mitigation or damage reduction. The first study of local administrations shows that the local civil protection and preparedness is arranged in the same manner all over the country. However, the administrative function for safety and security must deal with distinctly different characteristics in organisational relationships. The relationship with the local administration in general is labyrinthine because of rationality problems regarding adaptation, aims and objectives, assessment and evaluation, and with the allocation of responsibility. The relationship with the different departments within the authority suffers from problems with hierarchy in that the function lacks an authoritative centre, legitimacy, and executive power. The relationship with external entities exhibits problems with organisational identity due to a lack of resources, a distinct organisational character, and autonomy. The second study of local administrations shows that the temporal-spatial framing of a disturbance in the local fresh water system differed between the different organisational levels. Primarily the human agency in terms of trust and a pre-established sphere for action of the personnel was decisive in managing the disturbance. Theories of trust are used to conduct the analysis of the four studies. While the former system for civil protection and preparedness was characterized by an instrumental trust signified by vertical power and expectations of solving concrete problems the present system is more dependent on a so called humanitarian trust signified by horizontal division of power and expectations of managing vulnerability. The conclusion is that at the local level authenticity, legitimacy, and transparency can reduce the three forms of vulnerability: dependency, unpredictability, and irreversibility respectively. This type of trust fits better with the individual-organisation interface in which much of the responsibility for safety and security is allocated today

A majority of the public risk and crisis management in Sweden has recently been relocated from the national level to the local. The local municipal administration hence has been forced to integrate this new responsibility with existing services. One such service is the local healthcare administering the care for disabled people and the elderly. A research project consisting of four quantitative and qualitative empirical studies examined the perception and sense making of risk and crises among disabled people and the organizing of risk and crisis management within the local administration. The purpose of the project was to gain knowledge about the relational properties of the municipality and disabled inhabitants regarding risk and crisis. The results from the studies show that the influence from social capital on risk perception is significant for disabled people and that disabled people constantly apply risk remedial strategies in everyday life. The local authorities have so far not been able to integrate the risk and crisis management with the healthcare sector and the healthcare sector is not well prepared in terms of training and knowledge. Further, the framing of risks and crises differs significantly between different positions within the health care administration. The conclusions from the project are that the relocation of the public risk and crisis management are victimized by unclear regulation and that the organizational integration suffers from cultural divergence and disconnection between different departments. The conclusions point at a need to balance the risk and crisis management with knowledge from a bottom-up perspective and to strengthen the organizational capacity of considering the individual vulnerabilities and capabilities in risks and crises among a heterogeneous collection of welfare receivers. 

In Sweden a majority of the public risk and crisis management, termed RCM, has recently been relocated from the national level to the local. The chapter describes how local municipal administrations in general, and the healthcare administrations in particular, have been taking on this new field of responsibility. From the results of four empirical studies the chapter discusses how risk and crisis management has turned from being macro-oriented towards being micro-oriented. In order to meet the emerging problems from this shift, such as fuzzy networks with dispersed responsibilities, trust may serve as an opportunity to facilitate the integration of risk and crisis management with existing services in local administrations. Some of these notions are possibly transferable to other contexts.

A disaster resilience education and research roadmap for Europe 2030 has been launched. This roadmap represents an important output of the ANDROID disaster resilience network, bringing together existing literature in the field, as well as the results of various analysis and study projects undertaken by project partners.The roadmap sets out five key challenges and opportunities in moving from 2015 to 2030 and aimed at addressing the challenges of the recently announced Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030.

This roadmap was developed as part of the ANDROID Disaster Resilience Network, led by Professor Richard Haigh of the Global Disaster Resilience Centre (www.hud.ac.uk/gdrc ) at the School of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Huddersfield, UK. The ANDROID consortium of applied, human, social and natural scientists, supported by international organisations and a stakeholder board, worked together to map the field in disaster resilience education, pool their results and findings, develop interdisciplinary explanations, develop capacity, move forward innovative education agendas, discuss methods, and inform policy development. Further information on ANDROID Disaster Resilience network is available at: http://www.disaster-resilience.net

Disaster risk reduction (DRR) involves complex processes with different stakeholders at all administrative levels.Two elements in particular play a major role: the need to ensure stakeholders interoperability through an efficientexchange of data, and the inclusion of socioeconomic factors which may influence disaster risk reduction processes. This report aims at contributing to increase the global knowledge on these two elements, focusing on the related issues affecting disaster risk reduction throughout the European continent. The information contained in this report would support national authorities and DRR stakeholders in the continued implementation of the Sendai Framework,and to address the specificities identified by the EFDRR Road Map.

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.

It is well documented in the literature that exogenous shocks, such as large scale disasters, lead to dynamic change in policies in part because they expose institutional shortfalls and the inability of old policies to handle new problems. However, attributing a specific policy change to a particular exogenous shock is, we believe, not sufficient to explain the causes and process of policy change. Any analysis of policy change must also take into account the political context and the role of agency. In this paper we examine exceptional agency and the agentic role of individual actors in the shift of crisis management policy in Sweden from 2004 to 2009. We specifically interrogate the role of policy entrepreneurs and the strategies they employed in contributing to the policy change at the national level expressed in the establishment of the secretariat for Crisis Management and the Swedish Agency for Civil Contingencies. Drawing from policy science literature and through a series of elite interviews and document analyses, we identify key political actors and strategic acts resulting in policy change articulated mainly through institutional change.

The Swedish response to the pandemic at the national level has attracted considerable international attention, but little focus has been placed on the way municipalities dealt with the crisis. Using Hay's dimensions of politicization, namely the capacity for human agency, deliberation in the public domain, and social context, we analyze the politicization of the municipal response to the pandemic in Sweden. We do this based on the analysis of the decision making process to activate (or not) an extraordinary crisis management committee. We find inter alia, that (i) only a quarter of the municipalities activated the committee while a majority of them had an alternate special organization in place; (ii) support to the existing organizational structure was more salient than creating an extraordinary organization, and (iii) a robust municipal structure was deemed to be one able to withstand shocks without resorting to extraordinary governance arrangements. We find a ‘conditioned politicization’ of the response, privileging administration over politics.