The Limits of Local Self-Government: The Case of Local Government Disaster Management in Iceland

Crisis has become the new buzzword of the 21st century. In its simplest term of definition, crisis is an “unexpected event”. Coombs (2007) defines crisis as “the perception of an unpredictable event that threatens important expectancies of stakeholders and can seriously impact an organization’s performance and generate negative outcomes” (p. 2). In this relation looking into crisis management of local governments is of particular interest. Local authorities’ capacity to prepare, respond, resolve and learn from crisis depends on various conditions. Such as the level of self-government as in levels of fiscal, political and administrative autonomy. Iceland is one of the most decentralized countries in the world as its local governments are highly autonomous irrespective of measurement. Nevertheless, local authorities are not sovereign entities as they are an undisputable part of the individual state and as such must coordinate with higher authorities as well as follow laws and regulations decided by national legislative bodies. This paper explores the case of disaster management of the municipality of Grindavík in Iceland. On the 10th of November 2023 the entire population of the municipality of around 4000 residents was evacuated due to earthquakes and fears of impending volcanic eruption. When the entire population of a municipality is evacuated it raises various questions in relation to the political authority of the elected council, the financial means of the municipality as its tax bases break down and administrative effort of organizing housing and welfare services outside the territorial borders of the municipality in question. The study seeks to answer the question of whether there is a limit to local self-government when it comes to disaster management by examining the interaction between local and national authorities in the months following the disaster.