Core executive decisions during a major crisis – challenges of balancing political and expert considerations

During major crises related to, for example, to mass immigration, terrorism or economic shocks, core executive political leaders gain in power. External threats lead to processes of contraction, where the central capacity and influence of the government is strengthened and extraordinary regulatory measures are accepted both by private institutional stakeholders and citizens, often accompanied by arguments of trust, collectivity and legitimacy. Seen from a democratic point of view, this may be problematic, as normal democratic process are suspended or weakened. E.g., transparent decision making processes is challenging in major crises. The handling of COVID-19 in different countries has reflected these challenges. There are similarities and variance in the crisis measures used in different phases of the pandemic, but a recurrent pattern is that decision-making processes have become concentrated around a small core of executive politicians. In a crisis like this, experts are more needed than ever, because evidence-based decisions are urgently wanted, but the influence of the experts seem to vary substantially, from extremely strong in Sweden to much weaker in the UK and in the US. Our case is the handling of COVID-19 in Norway. The policymaking process concerning the government response has been centralized and complex, with many and diverse decision premises. Political leaders argue that their key decisions build on expert advice, but that is only partly true. Experts express uncertainty and are divided in their advice to policymakers. There is a lot of information in the public domain about what the expert advice is and what the final regulatory decisions are, but we lack more insight into why the government chooses certain solutions in core crisis decisions. An indication of this is that the media and public debates often ask why this regulation or what is the logic in regulating strongly in one area but not another one, meaning that the government struggles to motivate their decisions, which threatens to undermine the governance legitimacy. Accordingly our research questions in this study are: Which factors seem most important when cabinets makes core regulatory decisions during the handling of the COVID-19? How are decision premises in the form of advice from major expert bodies balanced with political considerations, and which political considerations dominate? Theoretically, we will discuss the answers to the research question vis-à-vis Graham Allison’s decision-making models. The question is if core decisions are based on the influence of a homogeneous political elite, or the result of negotiation and tug-of-war between political and expert bodies, or mostly the result of the influence of expert bodies? Empirically, we will base the study on material from the report from the Norwegian government’s independent and in-depth expert evaluation of the country’s response to the Covid-19 crisis. The evaluation has had full access to decision notes and drafts, meeting minutes, protocols as well as interviews with more than 30 central decision makers, including the prime minsters, other government ministers and top bureaucrats from ministries and executive and advisory government agencies.