Background
The overarching research question of the project is:
How did the COVID-19 pandemic challenge and transform the principle of sector responsibility in the Nordic countries? And how can the sector responsibility be reinterpreted to also allow for centralized decision making and strategic direction setting in Nordic crisis management beyond COVID-19?
With a project group consisting of a balanced mix of junior and senior researchers from Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, the project develops new knowledge that contributes to the ability of Nordic societies to manage future cross-sectorial societal crises effectively. Due to the research question’s inherent complexity and boundary-crossing nature, the project is cross-disciplinary in nature, including perspectives from sociology, anthropology, history, and political science, and relies on a number of
different approaches and methodologies. Associate Professors Christian Lo and Ann-Torill Tørrisplass from Norway contribute with anthropological and sociological perspectives on crisis management; Associate Professor Rasmus Dahlberg and Assistant Professor Andreas Hagedorn Krogh (Denmark) take a historical and a managerial approach to the topic; while Senior Researcher Kerstin Eriksson and post.doc Olof Oscarsson (Sweden) contribute with expertise within societal crisis management. Together,
the project group will unpack the intricate connections and complex empirical problems found in the sector responsibility principle’s ability to cope with the COVID-19 crisis from a variety of complementary lines of attack.
Apart from providing scholarly insights into crisis management, the project will provide lessons directly applicable to crisis management based on novel insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the sector responsibility principle in Norwegian, Swedish and Danish crisis management. The project takes advantage of the “natural experiment” aspects of intra-Nordic differences in managing the crisis, considering how the different responses activated, affected, and challenged the sector responsibility principle. To the extent that the sector responsibility principle remains relevant for crisis management in the Nordic countries, the project seeks to identify “best practices” of overcoming the inherent tensions between centralized, cross-sector crisis management and localized, within-sector crisis management in
ways that meet the need for centralized direction-setting and individual sector responsibility simultaneously. The project will map the lessons identified and facilitate discussion on the prospective course of action in the Nordic crisis management post-COVID-19. From the outset, the project will involve key stakeholders from Norwegian, Swedish and Danish emergency management authorities in workshops and offer courses for crisis management practitioners and decision-makers in order to support the research process and disseminate results. The findings of the project will feed directly into teaching and training programs on societal security at the consortium institutions. As a whole, the research project will serve to guide decision makers and contribute to the development of crisis management capabilities in the Nordic countries, thereby not only contributing important academic knowledge, but also helping to strengthen the knowledge base for practice and for research-informed policy.
The project consortium consists of Mid Sweden University (Sweden), Nord University (Norway) and, as lead institution, The Royal Danish Defence College (Denmark). The Royal Danish Defence College educates officers for the Danish Defence and the Danish Emergency Management Agency and
has a strong research environment on civil-military cooperation, Total Defence concepts, emergency preparedness, and crisis management from a military, a governance, and a historical and institutional perspective. “Societal Security” as an overarching concept holds a central place in the Royal Danish Defence College’s research and education strategy. Mid Sweden University brings deep knowledge on crisis management to the consortium, while Nord University in Norway contributes with expertise
within the organizational sphere.
Objectives
The purpose and aim of the proposed project, and its objectives and hypotheses
- Main hypothesis: Managing and coordinating a full-scale crisis response to COVID-19 across virtually all societal sectors and with an open-ended timeline severely challenged the sector responsibility principle in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, forcing crisis management authorities in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden to find new ways of thinking and acting in large-scale societal emergencies.
- Main objective: To describe and assess the transformation of the sector responsibility principle in Nordic crisis management during and after COVID-19, and to actively engage with crisis management authorities to find new ways forward.
- Specific objectives:
- Map the interpretation(s) of the sector responsibility principle in the Nordic countries prior to Covid-19 as a baseline.
- Analyze the impact of Covid-19 on Nordic crisis management with a special emphasis on transformations of interpretations of sector responsibility and assess the long-term systemic effects hereof.
- Contribute with research-based knowledge to future reinterpretations of the sector responsibility principle in Nordic crisis management.
Denmark, Norway and Sweden have been selected as the main cases for analysis as these countries have very similar crisis management systems, each guided by a set of comparable fundamental guiding principles either including or originating from sector responsibility. Finland will be included for comparison together with Iceland and the autonomous territories of Greenland and the Faroe Islands.