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This study explores how disasters are framed and politicised in the media to provide a systematic assessment of discursive dynamics and external political contexts of natural hazards. Utilising an actor-focused approach, it contributes with knowledge on how politicisation of disaster discourses unfolds. Two similar natural hazard events, the United Kingdom floods of 2005 and 2015, are investigated by means of a content analysis and a political claims analysis. The study finds that a tension between the national government and its contestants following the 2015 floods led to a framing contest which was heavily affected by the external political context at the time. The opposition and journalists constructed a narrative of government failure, not least by intertwining the event with the politically tense situation in the United Kingdom to further populist claims about government spending and EU policies. In 2005, the lack of a comparable external context and polarisation between actors in the media prevented a politicisation of the floods in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. These results illustrate the importance of broader political contexts, even those essentially unrelated to the natural hazard, for the politicisation of a disaster.

This article examines patterns of oppositional behaviour in the GermanBundestag’s Committee on European Union Affairs (EAC) for two separate legislative periods (2005–2009 and 2009–2013). The study makes two contributionsto previous research. It, first, shed some much-needed empirical light on politicalopposition in the Bundestag by examining how much and what kind of opposition exists in the German EAC. Secondly, the article examines the differences inoppositional behaviour of the Members of Parliament between the two legislative periods following an institutional reform in 2009 that afforded theBundestag with increased opportunity structures in Europen Union affairs.

The Montreal Protocol - the regime designed to protect the stratospheric ozone layer - has widely been hailed as the gold standard of global environmental governance and is one of few examples of international institutional cooperative arrangements successfully solving complex transnational problems. Although the stratospheric ozone layer still bears the impacts of ozone depleting substances (ODSs), the problem of ozone depletion is well on its way to being solved due to the protocol. This chapter examines how the protocol was designed and implemented in a way that has allowed it to successfully overcome a number of thorny challenges that most international environmental regimes must face: how to attract sufficient participation, how to promote compliance and manage non-compliance, how to strengthen commitments over time, how to neutralize or co-opt potential ‘veto players’, how to make the costs of implementation affordable, how to leverage public opinion in support of the regime’s goals, and, ultimately, how to promote the behavioural and policy changes needed to solve the problems and achieve the goals the regime was designed to solve. The chapter concludes that while some of the reasons for the Montreal Protocol’s success, such as fairly affordable, available substitutes for ODSs, are not easy to replicate, there are many other elements of this story that can be utilized when thinking about how to design solutions to other transnational environmental problems.

The purpose of this study is to examine, explain and interpret concepts of gender in relation to information management, crisis communication and collaboration within the framework of (crisis) communicator tasks. Since the crisis management realm is malecoded and the communications profession is female-coded, there is reason to gain more knowledge of how these relate to each other. The ambition is to contribute to an underdeveloped area of theory. A total of nineteen participants joined the study. All the interviews were processed according to the guidelines for the thematic analysis method. Analysis showed that three themes are central to understanding the role of communicators in the crisis management system. These are a) crisis communication as a temporary organization; b) requirements imposed on, and expectations from, the role and the individual and c) organizational greed. Results are discussed theoretically from a gender perspective, and practical implications are given as well as proposals for further studies. 

This study aims to deepen the understanding of processes that affect collaboration between professions and organisations in the crisis preparedness domain from a gender perspective. A total of twenty-three Swedish duty officers participated in the study. The analysis of the interviews show that collaboration can be understood as (a) the militarisation of civil crisis management actors, which means that many of the work processes and cultures that originate in military organisations can now be found in the security and crisis management sector; (b) the masculinisation, which means that when male dominance appears to prevail, active strategies are used against women, civilian personnel and also inexperienced colleagues and (c) organisational exclusion which emerges particularly in situations where collaboration between female-dominated and male-dominated organisations are required. The findings are important for crisis preparedness research and practice and should work in favour of evening out asymmetries in collaborative crisis management.

The COVID‐19 crisis is a stark reminder that modern society is vulnerable to a special species of trouble: the creeping crisis. The creeping crisis poses a deep challenge to both academics and practitioners. In the crisis literature, it remains ill‐defined and understudied. It is even harder to manage. As a threat, it carries a potential for societal disruption—but that potential is not fully understood. An accumulation of these creeping crises can erode public trust in institutions. This paper proposes a definition of a creeping crisis, formulates research questions, and identifies the most relevant theoretical approaches. It provides the building blocks for the systematic study of creeping crises.

The notion of a creeping crisis is a conceptual one, a heuristic device useful for helping to uncover hidden dimensions of today’s more pressing—some might say existential—societal problems. In this introductory chapter, we present our definition of creeping crisis and unpack the analytical dimensions of the concept. We review what existing research does and does not tell us about those dimensions. The chapter concludes by highlighting key research questions and outlining how the case studies in the book help to answer those questions.

This chapter returns to the research question that animated the case studies and summarizes the findings of the chapters in this book. It offers provisional answers to our research question and formulates an agenda for future research. Much of the chapter is devoted to thinking through the implications of the creeping crisis perspective for the practitioner community. We build on our research findings to argue that the time for action is now and formulate a set of recommendations that can help jumpstart this agenda.

This open access book explores a special species of trouble afflicting modern societies: creeping crises. These crises evolve over time, reveal themselves in different ways, and resist comprehensive responses despite periodic public attention. As a result, these crises continue to creep in front of our eyes. This book begins by defining the concept of a creeping crisis, showing how existing literature fails to properly define and explore this phenomenon and outlining the challenges such crises pose to practitioners. Drawing on ongoing research, this book presents a diverse set of case studies on: antimicrobial resistance, climate change-induced migration, energy extraction, big data, Covid-19, migration, foreign fighters, and cyberattacks. Each chapter explores how creeping crises come into existence, why they can develop unimpeded, and the consequences they bring in terms of damage and legitimacy loss. The book provides a proof-of-concept to help launch the systematic study of creeping crises. Our analysis helps academics understand a new species of threat and practitioners recognize and prepare for creeping crises.

This article focuses on mechanisms to handle inequality among participants in claimed participatory spaces. An ethnographic study of the Occupy Sandy network after Hurricane Sandy in New York City shows how activists worked with socio-economically marginalised communities with the aim of empowering them. Yet, the compensatory mechanisms put in place to counteract inequality brought about three problems of differentiation. These were: variation in individual agency, the difficulty of intersectional positions and situated marginalisation beyond commonly acknowledged identity markers.

Spontaneous, so-called emergent groups often arise in response to emergencies, disasters, and crises where citizens and relief workers find that pre-established norms of behavior, roles, and practices come into flux because of the severity and uncertainty of the situation. The scholarship on emergent groups dates to 1950s sociological theory on emergence and convergence, whereas contemporary research forms part of the wider disaster scholarship field. Emergent groups have been conceptualized and theorized from various angles, ranging from discussions around their effectiveness, to their possibilities as channels for the positive forces of citizen’s altruism, as well as to more skeptical accounts detailing the challenges emergent groups may pose for established emergency management organizations in relief situations. Scarce scholarly attention, however, is paid to the role of emergent groups when it comes to empowering marginalized and vulnerable communities. The few empirical studies that exist suggest linkages between active participation in emergent groups and empowerment of otherwise marginalized communities, as shown in an ethnographic study of the work of Occupy Sandy that emerged in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy that struck New York City in 2012. Although more systematic research is warranted, such empirical examples show potential in terms of shifting emergency and disaster management toward more inclusionary, participatory, and empowering practices. As low-income communities, often of color, experience the increasingly harsh effects of climate change, important issues to ponder are inclusion, participation, and empowerment.

The chapter is an analysis of the Sendai Framework for action; the central policy document in the global field of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). Since this Framework sets the agenda for the wider field of DRR practice across the globe, it is important to scrutinise for anyone interested in problems of gender-based disaster inequality. The Sendai Framework acknowledges issues of gender inequality yet, as discussed in this chapter, does so in a rather limited and somewhat problematic way. To understand the shortcomings the analysis makes use of Carol Bacchi’s “What’s the Problem Represented to Be?” (WPR) approach to policy analysis. With help of this analytical tool,  two conceptual logics are identified in the Framework that prevent full incorporation of a gender perspective. Firstly, a relief logic assumes a temporality of acuteness and prescribes male-dominated professional domains as experts. This makes a political analysis of gender inequality unintelligible. The relief logic also renders silent political solutions to alter gender inequalities. Secondly, a techno-managerial logic proposes technical and managerial solutions to problems of disaster risk. This rewrites solutions to structural inequalities as problems that can be solved technologically and managerially – in contrast to the types of political solutions needed to alter gender inequalities.

I Att samverka i kris möter vi människor som i akuta krissituationer ställs inför olika samarbetsproblem och dilemman. Deras historier berättas i skönlitterär form och illustrerar inlevelsefullt mellanmänskligt samspel i krislägen. Berättelserna levandegör de efterföljande analyserna och teoretiskt förankrade resonemangen där författarna kartlägger och belyser problematik och trångmål som uppstår under kritiska omständigheter.

Stoffet i skildringarna är empiriskt material från verkliga situationer som terrordåd och skogsbränder, och författarna har lagt sig vinn om att på ett pedagogiskt sätt visa på de utmaningar som kan uppstå vid samverkan i krissituationer. De analyserar händelseförloppen med hjälp av forskningsrön och beskriver också det svenska förvaltningssystemets betydelse för respektive krissituation. På så vis får läsaren även med sig kunskaper om det svenska krisberedskapssystemet. Boken lämpar sig för studenter, yrkesverksamma och andra med intresse för krishantering, krisberedskap och samverkan.

Covid-19-pandemin har påverkat hela Sverige, inte minst genom dess stora effekter på liv och hälsa. Den utgör en så kallad ”gränsöverskridande kris” som har pågått under lång tid och där kunskapen kring viruset och dess effekter fortlöpande utvecklats. Krisen har förutsatt omfattande samverkan mellan aktörer på samtliga samhällsnivåer. Covid-19-pandemin är därför intressant att dra lärdomar ifrån.

Syftet med utvärderingen har varit att analysera och utvärdera Länsstyrelsens i Stockholms län (länsstyrelsen) krishantering under covid-19 samt att identifiera möjliga utvecklingsområden i länsstyrelsens arbete med krisberedskap. Målet med utvärderingen är att bidra till länsstyrelsens arbete med krisberedskap samt till kunskapsuppbyggnad och forskning om svensk krisberedskap och den samlade svenska hanteringen av covid-19 och dess konsekvenser. Förhoppningen är att utvärderingen ska gynna svensk krisberedskap i stort.

Länsstyrelsen har, framförallt genom det regionala geografiska områdesansvaret, viktiga uppgifter i svensk krisberedskap. Länsstyrelsen ska, bland annat, verka för gemensam inriktning, prioritering och samordning av åtgärder och aktörer i länet. På ett övergripande plan har länsstyrelsens hantering och hur den utvecklats över tid gynnats av länsstyrelsens krislednings (landshövding, länsöverdirektör, Chef i beredskap corona) engagemang och ändamålsenliga agerande, av en flexibel samverkan mellan länsstyrelsen och Samverkan Stockholmsregionens (SSR) samverkansstab samt av en effektiv användning av samarbetet mellan aktörerna inom SSR. Länsstyrelsens krisledning har, på ett ändamålsenligt och positivt sätt, agerat självständigt för att bevaka Stockholms läns intressen både inom ramen för det länsstyrelsegemensamma samordningskansliet och bilateralt med nationella myndigheter. Länsstyrelsens arbete med inriktning och samordning inom länet (både inom ramen för samarbetet med SSR och i bilaterala konstellationer) bedöms sammantaget ha bidragit på ett positivt sätt till arbetet med att uppnå de mål som finns formulerade för länsstyrelsernas krisberedskap.

Flera lärdomar kan dras av länsstyrelsens krishantering utifrån utvärderingen, framförallt gällande samverkan, organisation och kommunikation.

Länsstyrelsen har en central roll att spela i svensk krisberedskap vid komplexa och gränsöverskridande kriser och rollen i dessa händelser blir mer omfattande än att verka för samordning inom länet. Snarare befinner sig länsstyrelserna i en skärningspunkt där nationella, regionala och lokala perspektiv kan samlas, vilket innebär att förmågan till samlad analys och situationsförståelse blir viktig. Rollen kan emellertid inte nödvändigtvis lösas av länsstyrelserna gemensamt då detta skapar ett filter i den vertikala samverkan, utan varje länsstyrelse har här en viktig funktion att fylla. Därtill kan inte heller länsstyrelserna förlita sig på att behoven identifieras underifrån eftersom att hanteringen då riskerar att bli reaktiv.

SSR har visat sig vara en effektiv plattform för att uppnå gemensam inriktning, samordning och enhetlig kommunikation i länet. Samarbetet inom ramen för SSR har gynnat hanteringen och medförde att de relevanta aktörerna i Stockholms län kunde börja samverka i ett tidigt skede då de inte behövde bygga upp en struktur och kontaktvägar. SSR:s former för informationsinhämtning har gjort det möjligt för länsstyrelsen att agera buffert mellan nationella myndigheter och kommunerna genom att begränsa och effektivisera förfrågningar om information. Länsstyrelsens krisledning har också haft förmågan att identifiera behov av samordning som inte låtit sig lösas genom SSR och har hanterat dessa i andra forum. Tillsammans med SSR:s RSIB har länsstyrelsens krisledning också haft förmågan att anpassa strukturerna efter de krav som händelsen har ställt. Förmågan till anpassning och flexibilitet är viktig att slå vakt om.

Det är sannolikt att Stockholm som län behöver en struktur som SSR för att utföra uppgifterna inom ramen för det geografiska områdesansvaret. Det finns anledning att dra lärdom av erfarenheterna av samarbetet under pandemin för att utveckla SSR och integrering av länsstyrelsens och SSR:s respektive krisorganisationer. Det kan också finnas behov av att tydliggöra och ytterligare förankra ansvarsfördelningen mellan länsstyrelsens krisorganisation och SSR:s kansli/samverkansstab och då särskilt gentemot SSR aktörerna. Det är inte helt entydigt för SSR-aktörerna eller på länsstyrelsen var ansvarsfördelningen går mellan länsstyrelsen stab och SSR:s samverkansstab. I förlängningen innebär en sådan otydlighet en viss risk vid ansvarsutkrävande.

Länsstyrelsens samverkan med och inom det länsstyrelsegemensamma samordningskansliet har varit gynnsam. Det har till exempel inneburit att kontakter med nationella myndigheter kunnat samordnas. Det hade samtidigt underlättat ytterligare för länsstyrelsen om man kunnat rapportera lägesbilder enligt en gemensam mall till samtliga mottagande aktörer. Det gemensamma arbetet kan dock hämmas på grund av ”rättviseperspektivet” och att länsstyrelserna tillsammans blir mer av en nationell aktör än en regional. Länsledningen har utöver engagemanget i det länsstyrelsegemensamma arbetet också behövt ha förmåga att samverka enskilt med nationella myndigheter.

Sammantaget kan inte länsstyrelsens roll i svensk krisberedskap, och särskilt inte vid gränsöverskridande kriser, fullt lösas genom arbetet inom ramen för SSR respektive det nationella samarbetet mellan länsstyrelserna. Erfarenheterna från hanteringen av pandemin visar på centrala uppgifter för och förmågor hos länsstyrelsen vid kriser. Dessa erfarenheter bör omhändertas i länsstyrelsens krisplanering men det är samtidigt av särskild vikt att inte bygga organisationen för att kunna hantera pandemier, utan att ta hänsyn till bredden i länsstyrelsens uppdrag. Vidare utveckling av länsstyrelsens krisorganisation bör beakta samarbetet med SSR då detta visat sig centralt i hanteringen. Utvecklingsarbetet bör också ta hänsyn till integreringen mellan krisorganisation och linjeorganisation och se till att staben kan stödja länsstyrelsens beslutsprocesser. I alla utvecklingsprocesser är övning och träning av medarbetare av central betydelse.

Några aspekter i hanteringen framstår som särskilt viktiga lärdomar som kan användas för att utveckla länsstyrelsens krisorganisation. Anpassningen av länsstyrelsens stabsstruktur, integreringen med SSR:s samverkansstab, tillsättningen av rollen som insatschef/Chef i beredskap corona och att länsstyrelsen utnyttjade befintlig delegationsordning framstår ha gynnat hanteringen och bör således inarbetas i krisplaneringen.

Några ytterligare utvecklingsområden har identifierats. Rutiner för hur överlämningen mellan stabschefer sker kan förbättras och bör fortsatt diskuteras för att skapa mer kontinuitet för respektive stabschef. Erfarenheter från utvärderingen visar också att länsstyrelsens krisorganisation endast i begränsad utsträckning har bidragit till målet att verka för att samordna information i länet. Länsstyrelsen behöver även stärka sin kriskommunikationsförmåga som del av sitt samordningsansvar under en kris. Länsstyrelsens TiB har aktiverat ledningsorganisationen och tagit initiativ till samverkan och aktiverat SSR. Aktiveringen av SSR initierade också beslutet att aktivera länsstyrelsens stab. Underlaget till aktiveringen togs dock inte fram på beslut av länsstyrelsen. Länsstyrelsen bör försäkra sig om att det finns en egen förmåga till omvärldsbevakning för att kunna initiera samverkan utan att förlita sig på SSR.

Slutligen är länsstyrelsens analysförmåga i behov av utveckling. Utvärderingen indikeraratt länsstyrelsens krisorganisation bör innefatta en starkare analysförmåga med en övad analysgrupp som arbetar utifrån tydliga, systematiska och strukturerade processer och metoder. Analysprocessen bör också tydligare sättas in i länsstyrelsens övriga processer (särskilt processer för beslutsfattande) och tillgodose en förmåga att initiera och driva samverkan även i situationer där behoven inte identifierats av SSR:s aktörer. Även detta arbete bör ske i samverkan med SSR.

Sammantaget visar utvärderingen av Länsstyrelsen i Stockholms läns krishantering i samband med covid-19-pandemin på relevanta lärdomar för länsstyrelsens krisorganisation. Slutligen indikerar erfarenheterna och analysen i projektet att forskningen om hanteringen av gränsöverskridande kriser behöver inriktas mot regionala och ämnesövergripande aktörer och mot organisation för samverkan och ledning.

Authoritarian states and democracies have long used propaganda and disinformation to manipulate target audiences. Recently interest in this issue has increased, especially as active pro-Kremlin disinformation measures have targeted the Nordic countries. So far, research on disinformation measures in a Nordic context is limited and focuses mainly on how individual countries have been exposed, or how disinformation in regard to a particular and debated issue have affected the debate in individual countries, while research is lacking on how Nordic countries organize themselves and work to identify and counter such threats ina comparative perspective. This comparative case study uses qualitative analysis of literature, policy documents and interviews with expert practitioners to show that Sweden and Finland have established and tested organizations and networks to identify and counter disinformation campaigns. Similar institutionalization is now underway in Denmark and Norway. The states inspire each other and participate in international collaboration. But how the countries participate in such collaboration varies and, moreover, has bearing on their vulnerability in facing the threat.

Crisis management research is a young academic field, and organisational crisisinduced learning has been relatively neglected in the literature. Based on previous research and Moynihan’s conceptualization of inter- and intracrisis learning, this essay aims to discuss factors that affect public sector organisations’ ability to learn from crises in general, and the Swedish government’s lesson drawing from the COVID-19 pandemic in particular. Internal disagreements regarding the objectives of the response strategy and polarisation on how to handle the crisis has limited Swedish public sector organisations’ ability to learn from past experiences (intercrisis learning). Although instances of organisational learning during the crisis (intracrisis learning) have been observed, interorganisational cooperation difficulties and politicisation of the crisis management initiative as a whole seem to be affecting the learning process. There is a risk that both inter- and intracrisis learning processes in the wake of COVID-19 are impacted negatively due to the national and international politicisation of Sweden’s management of the pandemic.

Crises shake societies and organizations to their foundation. Public authorities, private companies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and members of the general public all have a role to play in managing crises. From a public administration perspective, however, responsibility clearly falls on politicians and strategic decision makers in public authorities. The task to manage crises is getting increasingly challenging, with more actors and sectors involved, unclear lines of accountability, and close connections between risks, organizations, networks, and interests. This means that the fundamental opportunity to improve structures for crisis management and preparedness, which requires learning from previous experiences, is increasing in salience. Previous research into the political dimensions of crisis management holds that learning is a key part of crisis management and a fundamental challenge to crisis leadership. The criteria that set crises apart from day-to-day work—that is, core values at stake, time pressure, and substantial uncertainty—also challenge the learning parts of crisis management. Learning in relation to crisis is essential for earnest investigation into what went wrong and why the crisis occurred, and, moreover, to make sure that it does not happen again. As organizations play a key role in crisis management, organizational learning is a useful concept to explore learning in relation to crises. Furthermore, the concept of crisis-induced learning has proven salient in bridging the literatures of crisis management and learning. Crisis-induced learning is understood as purposeful efforts, triggered by a perceived crisis and carried out by members of an organization working within a community of inquiry. These efforts, in turn, lead to new understanding and behavior on the basis of that understanding. The concept of crisis-induced learning can help add clarity to what learning is in relation to crises and who the learning agents are in these processes. Other important theorizing efforts in bridging crisis and learning include categorizing learning into its cognitive and behavioral aspects as well as its temporal aspects including inter- and intra-crisis learning. Finally, relating to issues of methodology, it is useful to distil ways to measure and analyze learning and to explain how crisis-induced learning is distinguished from other types of experiential learning.

This study applies an institutional profession perspective on a significant crisis management actor in an aim to deepen the understanding of collaborative crisis management work and practices. The study argues that a professions perspective holds a key to approaching interagency gaps in status and influence, which tend to affect collaborative crisis management negatively. Empirically the study is based on 19 interviews with local crisis communicators in Sweden. Findings indicate that, in terms of internal collaboration, limited knowledge among organizational members about the role and skills of crisis communicators require communicators to spend time and resources on ‘promoting’ their competence within the organization. Regarding inter‐organizational collaboration, the study shows that the closer a communication officer works to the spatial place of the crisis and to the rescue service, the higher the status of the communication officer. Interestingly enough, relations seem to go both ways as emergency service personnel can also be empowered by becoming more skillful communicators.

Lately, scholars have been engaging in studies on the crossroads between collaborative public management and crisis management, but our knowledge on how organizations work together with interorganizational goals in times of crisis or in relation to the threat that crises pose, is still limited. This study aims to illuminate how interagency horizontal collaboration plays out in practice. An interview study with twenty‐three Swedish duty officers in three organizations with critical tasks in the institutional crisis management system is carried out to unearth impediments to interagency collaboration that emerge when organizations from different policy subsystems engage in crisis collaboration. Empirically, the study contributes with new knowledge on how a crucial function in crisis management carries out work and deals with challenges. Theoretically, it contributes to the literature on crisis management collaboration by shedding light on processes of horizontal collaboration in the area of crisis management.

Power displacement and recapture: A qualitative study of regional duty officers in government agency interaction

This study highlights and discusses challenges organizations face when collaborating in the field of crisis management. We study how Swedish County Council duty officers experience collaboration with external government agencies. Our interview study is based on thirteen interviews with duty officers from six County Councils. In the analysis we discuss our results from a gender perspective. Furthermore we lay the foundation for an analytical model that can be used to better understand problems with collaboration in the field of crisis preparedness and management.

Projection of strategic narratives to gain competitive advantages is a central feature in the global competition for status and power. This article presents a comparative narrative analysis of how the Russian state sponsored news platform Sputnik narrates Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden 2014–2019. The objectives are to uncover what negative work strategic narratives can perform and to decipher how adverse narratives are constructed. The findings suggest that Sputnik uses a mix of standard strategies and tailor-made narratives, working to destruct, direct and suppress the Nordics. The analysis exposed distinct differences as Sputnik narrated Sweden and Denmark more negatively than Norway and Finland. The narratives can serve to divide and weaken the Nordics and the EU, and undermine international reputations of each state. The strategy of division through narratives is particularly problematic as polarization challenges Western democracies and the EU. The article furthers narrative research by testing a recently crafted analytical framework and by presenting findings that indicate a need for a broadened research agenda. Whereas previous research has primarily centred on how malign information influence can harm democracy, our results indicate that narratives can cause a broader variety of harms.

Climate change, globalization, urbanization, social isolation, and increased interconnectednessbetween physical, human, and technological systems pose major challenges to disaster risk reduction(DRR). Subsequently, economic losses caused by natural hazards are increasing in many regions of theworld, despite scientific progress, persistent policy action, and international cooperation. We argue thatthese dramatic figures call for novel scientific approaches and new types of data collection to integratethe two main approaches that still dominate the science underpinning DRR: the hazard paradigm and thevulnerability paradigm. Building from these two approaches, here we propose a research framework thatspecifies the scope of enquiry, concepts, and general relations among phenomena. We then discuss theessential steps to advance systematic empirical research and evidence-based DRR policy action.

One key question for the European security community is whether today’s confrontation between the EU member states and Russia is the end of its spread to the Baltic Sea region, including Russian districts, and the beginning of a return of geopolitical rivalry in the region. This article investigates the possibilities of avoiding such a negative downward spiral by drawing on security community theory and discussing two different methods of security community building – “top-down” and “bottom-up”. It points to the need for the EU institutions to return to the Monnet method to find a way out of the geopolitical “zero-sum” game increasingly played by the governments in the region. This implies not putting restrictions on participants from the north-west regions of Russia in strategically chosen areas of cooperation, and a more pronounced bottom-up, long-term and macro-regional approach built on joint problem-solving projects and people-topeople contacts that generate “win-win” games.

European states may no longer expect inter‐state violence, but they do expect complex threats emanating from storms, epidemics, terror attacks and earthquakes. The EU has answered these threats through the rapid and far‐reaching institutionalization of European security cooperation. However, member states hesitate to use their common capacities. While both intergovernmental and constructivist approaches treat this pattern as evidence of weak integration and as unimportant to the European security community, we examine this cooperation through the lens of practice theory and reveal how the growth of EU capacities is fully compatible with a critical and cautious approach to activating these resources in the everyday work of national officials. Using unique empirical data retrieved through participant observation in the first multisectoral crisis management exercise held by the EU, the findings of this analysis sketch the contours of a new type of security community.

Why did the Swedish Government fail to act earlier against the Covid-19-virus in the light of the many foreshadowing outbreaks in China and in Italy and other EU Member States? With the help of the concept creeping crisis (smygande kris), this article analyses the tardiness with which the Swedish authorities acted to prevent the spread of the virus in the early stages of the pandemic (January – February 2020). The term refers to the phenomenon of belated measures despite extensive knowledge of slow-acting threats with sudden outbursts such as pandemics and global warming. The article explains the procrastination of Swedish actions as a result of psychological repression (“it couldn’t happen here in our country”), as well as cognitive delays that meant that understanding the threat evolution in the abstract did not spur action in proportion to the insight (“we saw it coming, but didn’t act until we felt it in our everyday life”). It ends by discussing possible ways to create more practically and temporally informed knowledge (“know-how”, “know-when”) of creeping crises for the generation of timely action able to stop these before they explode into acute crises.

This chapter provides an overview of the literature on technology and International Relations (IR) theory. First, the chapter considers how technology is treated in more general IR theory, including what role technology plays in the wider paradigmatic debates of IR. Second, the chapter scrutinizes attempts to develop specific theories on technology and international relations. Third, the chapter discusses the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches, including whether there are some areas that are amply theorized while others remain under-researched. In particular, the chapter addresses how and to what extent various approaches have been able to analyze the relationship between technological and societal change, both including the rapid development of new technologies (concerning, for example, cyber, nano, space, robotics and AI technologies), and how technologies and critical infrastructures are becoming increasingly interconnected. Finally, the chapter suggests new horizons for empirically grounded theory on the relationship between technology and international society.

Despite the growing debate over the European Commission’s (hereafter, Commission) role in crises, there are few systematic explanations for the variety of actions undertaken by the Commission in times of crisis. This article outlines a heuristic device to explain the Commission’s actions during crises, based on the variables ‘Commission mandate’ and ‘member state engagement’. To this end, it examines two crisis events that affected two strategically important policy areas for European Union integration: the early stages of the financial crisis that began in 2008 and the migration following the 2011 Arab Spring. Based on analysis of these cases, this study identifies four strategies applied by the Commission: doer, follower, cooperator and recycler. Our study concludes that member state engagement and Commission mandate are important variables in explaining under which circumstances these strategies are used by the Commission

This book critically examines the global diffusion and local reception of resiliencethrough the implementation of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) programmes inPacific and Caribbean island states.Global efforts to strengthen local disaster resilience capacities have become astaple of international development activity in recent decades, yet the successfulimplementation of DRR projects designed to strengthen local resilience remainselusive. While there are pockets of success, a gap remains between global expectationsand local realities. Through a critical realist study of global and localworldviews of resilience in the Pacific and Caribbean islands, this book arguesthat the global advocacy of DRR remains inadequate because of a failure to prioritisea person-orientated ethics in its conceptualisation of disaster resilience.This regional comparison provides a valuable lens to understand the underlyingsocial structures that makes resilience possible and the extent to which local governments,communities and persons interpret and modify their behaviour on riskwhen faced with the global message on resilience.This book will be of much interest to students of resilience, risk management,development studies and area studies.

Terror attacks are moments of chaos and destabilization. From a journalistic perspective, terror attacks disrupt everyday news work where journalists find themselves struggling to restore order and report the event at hand as accurate and speedy as possible. From the perspective of the affected audience, journalism fills vital functions in making sense of the attack, by responding to a complex and rapidly changing mix of social needs. In this article, we explore how such disrupting events as terror can contribute to newsroom innovation in terms of journalistic processes, journalistic products, and even journalistic genres. We use the terror attack and massacre in Norway on 22 July 2011 as a case study, as it to a large extent forced journalists to think outside the box in order to meet the audience’s informational and rhetorical needs. The study shows that innovation is tightly connected to the development of the rhetorical situation through three phases: shock, start-up, and transformation. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with journalists who covered the attack, as well as a rhetorical exploration of the evolving situational context and the texts that were created in response.

The Syrian conflict gave rise to a large mobilization of Islamist foreign fighters. In recent years, many of these foreign fighters have asked to be repatriated from overcrowded refugee camps in northern Syria, camps known as hotbeds for radicalization. While researchers and humanitarian organizations largely agree that repatriation can prevent further radicalization and transnational threats, political leaders refuse to act. As the dire humanitarian situation in the camps and a denial of responsibility at home intensify, the situation is becoming more acute. This chapter explores the issue of remaining foreign fighters in Syria and the evolving threat situation as an example of a creeping crisis. The chapter focuses specifically on the Swedish handling of these foreign fighters. At least three hundred Swedish citizens traveled to Syria in 2012. In recent years, many of these have asked to be repatriated. Similar to its European counterparts, the Swedish government has refused to meet these foreign fighters’ requests, potentially generating a broader global threat. The Swedish response is the focus of this chapter and illuminates one of the key aspects of a creeping crisis.

In recent years, we have learned that forced global migration pose a serious threat to international peace and societal values. Despite the many warnings and refugee crises across the world, most national governments have insufficiently addressed this threat. In this chapter, we try to explain this lack of action. The chapter explores possible explanations such as the denial mindset of “it probably won’t happen here (and if it does, it won’t affect my family and community)”. The chapter focuses on the border management crisis in Sweden in 2015. The Swedish government did not address the situation as a crisis until the refugees, who had been on the Mediterranean Sea and traversing north over the continent for months, ended up in Malmö in the south of Sweden in September 2015. This predictable set of events caused chaos for the unprepared Swedish police and the border and migration authorities who had to handle the situation under conditions of urgency and apparent uncertainty.

Hydrogeological hazards are increasingly causing damage worldwide due to climatic and socio-economic changes. Building resilient communities is crucial to reduce potential losses. To this end, one of the first steps is to understand how people perceive potential threats around them. This study aims at exploring how risk awareness of, and preparedness to, face hydrological hazards changes over time. A cohort study was carried out in two villages in the northeastern Italian Alps, Romagnano and Vermiglio, affected by debris flows in 2000 and 2002. Surveys were conducted in 2005 and 2018, and the results compared. The survey data show that both awareness and preparedness decreased over time. We attribute this change to the fact that no event had occurred in a long time and to a lack of proper risk communication strategies. The outcomes of this study contribute to socio-hydrological modelling by providing empirical data on human behaviour dynamics.

How is accountability in safety management affected in and by public-private urban multiroute stations? To help address this question, major interchanges with newly tunneled lines in London and Stockholm are studied: Stratford station and Stockholm Station City. Differences in origin, national and regional significance, and specific governance features of these megaprojects are identified. Accountability in safety management appears more critiqued in the Swedish case, possibly related to comparatively higher attention to particularities of this "bottleneck" national nexus. Wrought with albeit less visible geographical and geological constraints, the comparative magnitude of London and acclimatization to projects has explanatory value. Similarity in the patchwork of public-private actors, implying fragmented governance jeopardizing accountability is observed in both cases. Both megaprojects span decades, with turnover and lack of institutional memory posing further challenges for accountability and safety. A major finding is that, complementary to standard risk analysis, accountability in the governance of infrastructural megaprojects begs improvement.

This chapter addresses the technological megashift and implications for security and accountability within the EU. Digitalised interconnectivity of increasingly ‘embedded’ systems, infrastructures and societal functions are megashift features. Although the EU hardly lacks technological strategies, accountability structures beg improvement, and there are multiple expert groups with insufficient coordination and societal focus. The EU suffers from techno-optimism—coupled to powerful objectives of fuelling economic growth—which can lead to broadly conceived and represented security issues falling in shadow and struggles between interests being inadequately addressed. This chapter analyses how the EU deals with the megashift with respect to threats, surveillance systems, infrastructural vulnerability and public-private accountability. It is suggested that the EU take (i) a holistic grip on the megashift and implications, (ii) abandon optimistic techno-determinism for nuanced and contextual understanding and (iii) avoid outsourcing management of sensitive data and critical infrastructures.

Corporatisation of critical information infrastructure (CII) is rooted in the ‘privatisation wave’ of the 1980s-90s, when the ground was laid for outsourcing public utilities. Despite well-known risks relating to reliability, resilience, and accountability, commitment to efficiency imperatives have driven governments to outsource key public services and infrastructures. A recent illustrative case with enormous implications is the 2017 Swedish ICT scandal, where outsourcing of CII caused major security breaches. With the transfer of the Swedish Transport Agency’s ICT system to IBM and subcontractors, classified data and protected identities were made accessible to non-vetted foreign private employees – sensitive data could thus now be in anyone’s hands. This case clearly demonstrates accountability gaps that can arise in public-private governance of CII.

Action toward strengthened disaster risk reduction (DRR) ideally builds from evidence-based policymaking to inform decisions and priorities. This is a guiding principle for the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR), which outlines priorities for action to reduce disaster risk. However, some of these practical guidelines conceal oversimplified or unsubstantiated claims and assumptions, what we refer to as 'truisms', which, if not properly addressed, may jeopardize the long-term goal to reduce disaster risks. Thus far, much DRR research has focused on ways to bridge the gap between science and practice while devoting less attention to the premises that shape the understanding of DRR issues. In this article, written in the spirit of a perspective piece on the state of the DRR field, we utilize the SFDRR as an illustrative case to identify and interrogate ten selected truisms, from across the social and natural sciences, that have been prevalent in shaping DRR research and practice. The ten truisms concern forecasting, loss, conflict, migration, the local level, collaboration, social capital, prevention, policy change, and risk awareness. We discuss central claims associated with each truism, relate those claims to insights in recent DRR scholarship, and end with suggestions for developing the field through advances in conceptualization, measurement, and causal inference.

In managing and communicating crises, the responsibilities of government far exceed those of private organizations. This chapter is therefore taking a closer look at the ability of public organizations to handle a crisis. This chapter introduces frames for public administration and public communication management as a starting point for the understanding of public organizations’ practice of crisis communication. It also pays attention to how the emergence of networks and use of social media affect public organizations’ crisis communication. From these viewpoints, the chapter presents both practical and normative challenges for future crisis communication work in public organizations.

Framing is probably the most popular analytical concept within communication studies. This entry defines the concept and traces its use with a particular focus on its relevance for strategic communication. The basic attraction of framing lies in how frames provide direction for our understanding of issues through the use of certain organizing principles. During framing, some elements of issues are highlighted whereas others are downplayed or left out. This influences the way that a problem is diagnosed and what remedies are suggested. Many different understandings and uses of the concept are found in the literature, but all have in common the idea that frames are essentially about providing meaning.

Resilience has been raised as a core task within disaster risk reduction frameworks, yet it remains difficult to implement these global ideas in local communities. This study used Community Based Resilience Analysis Approach to investigate the components that are perceived as important in resilience and the extent to which these components have been achieved. It explored the trend of resilience and beneficial interventions for building resilience as perceived by interviewed participants in Mbale Municipality in Eastern Uganda. The study results indicate that access to education, healthcare, employment, peace and security were the most important components of resilience. Respondents perceived to have progressed in accessing credit, building productive farms and sustaining peace and security by July 2017. However, they assessed a lack of diverse income-generating activities, access to insurance, food security, employment and health care. Moreover, the study showed that respondents from marginalised parts of the municipality experienced decreasing resilience while respondents in other divisions had increased resilience. These results provide context-specific components of resilience by the local people. This can inform the formulation of resilience indices and bear relevance for policy-makers and practitioners to understand areas to invest more resources to achieve resilience.

The parallel universe of cyberspace, created by computer networks, ones, and zeros, has changed the rules of the game. It would be inevitable for crisis management research to remain unaffected by the new challenges arising. The present article delves into the underexplored concept of cyber crises, by initiating an academic problematization of crisis conceptualization. Drawing from transboundary crisis management theory, it examines two major cyberattacks, the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack and the 2016 hacking of the DNC, and explores an empirical puzzle: why are these cases not characterized as crises even though they fit already existing definitions? The article contributes to the theory of transboundary crises by shedding light on previously overlooked cyber crisis characteristics and attempting to propose a definition of cyber crises. The way we perceive crises has a direct impact on how we manage them. Broadening the research agenda and understanding the concept of a cyber crisis could pave the way for a more effective and proactive response to new threats, which is what the following pages attempt to demonstrate.

This chapter deepens our understanding of cyber crises with the help of the creeping crisis concept. The chapter shows that although emerging technologies make malicious activities in cyberspace more sophisticated, vulnerabilities enabling such threats have been inherent in cyber assets for a very long time in the form of creeping crises. The question is: was WannaCry the acute crisis or just a precursor event to a bigger explosion? It is argued that the WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017 should be considered a wake-up call. The chapter demonstrates how the cyber threat was lurking in the background, gradually evolving in time and space in a non-linear fashion and receiving varying levels of attention.

What implications do societies’ risk perceptions have for flood losses? This study uses a stylized, socio-hydrological model to simulate the mutual feedbacks between human societies and flood events. It integrates hydrological modelling with cultural theory and proposes four ideal types of society that reflect existing dominant risk perception and management: risk neglecting, risk monitoring, risk downplaying and risk controlling societies. We explore the consequent trajectories of flood risk generated by the interactions between floods and people for these ideal types of society over time. The results suggest that flood losses are substantially reduced when awareness-raising attitudes are promoted through inclusive, participatory approaches in the community. In contrast, societies that rely on top-down hierarchies and structural measures to protect settlements on floodplains may still suffer significant losses during extreme events. This study illustrates how predictions formed through social science theories can be applied and tested in hydrological modelling.