The Politics of Bureaucratic Crisis Coordination: Covid-19 in Hindsight

Abstract

A large-scale crisis like COVID-19 activates most cogs in the big wheel that is the public sector. Key to crisis preparation is therefore to plan both for the division of labour and for coordination across organizations, policy areas and levels of government. At the same time, COVID-19 was characterized by urgency and uncertainty, something that disrupted the activation of pre-prepared plans and procedures. Government responses to COVID-19 were in many cases unpredictable, ad hoc, and driven by the perceptions, experiences and interests of political leaders. This panel invites theoretical and empirical papers that shed light on the balance between planning and improvisation in responding to COVID-19 and between the roles of bureaucrats and experts on the one hand and political leaders on the other. We invite both comparative papers as well as papers focusing on national level processes of COVID-19 related coordination and decision-making.

Title	Details
Coping with the Unforeseen: Danish Management of the Covid-19 Crisis	View Paper Details
The Swedish response to the COVID-19 pandemic	View Paper Details
Between Centralized Leadership and Diffusion of Responsibility: The Finnish Government Responds to COVID-19 Crisis	View Paper Details
Core executive decisions during a major crisis – challenges of balancing political and expert considerations	View Paper Details
The role of Länder governments in the German responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Be-tween joint action and going alone approach	View Paper Details