The Politics of Crisis Management: Public Leadership Under Pressure

by Arjen Boin , Paul 't Hart , Eric Stern , Bengt Sundelius

• ISBN13: 9780521607339
• ISBN10: 0521607337
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-01-09
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Crisis management has become a defining feature of contemporary governance. In times of crisis, communities and members of organizations expect their leaders to minimize the impact of the crisis at hand, while critics and bureaucratic competitors try to seize the moment to blame incumbent rulers and their policies. In this extreme environment, policy makers must somehow establish a sense of normality, and foster collective learning from the crisis experience. In this uniquely comprehensive analysis, the authors examine how leaders deal with the strategic challenges they face, the political risks and opportunities they encounter, the errors they make, the pitfalls they need to avoid, and the paths away from crisis they may pursue. This book is grounded in over a decade of collaborative, cross-national case study research, and offers an invaluable multidisciplinary perspective. This is an original and important contribution from experts in public policy and international security.

Author Biography

Dr. Arjen Boin is an Assistant Professor at Leiden University, Department of Public Administration Professor Paul't Hart is Professor of Public Administration at the Utrecht School of Governance, Utrecht University Dr Eric Stern is Director of Crismart, and Associate Professor of Government at Uppsala University Professor Bengt Sundelius is the Founding Director of Crismart and Professor of Government at Uppsala University

Table of Contents

List of figures and table	vii
Acknowledgments	ix
Crisis management in political systems: five leadership challenges	1	(17)
Crisis management and public leadership	1	(1)
The nature of crisis	2	(2)
The ubiquity of crisis	4	(3)
Crisis management: leadership perspectives	7	(3)
Leadership in crisis: five critical tasks	10	(8)
Sense making: grasping crises as they unfold	18	(24)
What the hell is going on?	18	(1)
Barriers to crisis recognition: organizational limitations	19	(9)
Psychological dimensions of sense making: stress and performance	28	(2)
Precarious reality-testing: constraints	30	(5)
Conditions for reliable reality-testing	35	(2)
Conclusion	37	(5)
Decision making: critical choices and their implementation	42	(27)
The myth of chief executive choice	42	(1)
Leaders as crisis decision makers	43	(2)
Leaders and their crisis teams: group dynamics	45	(6)
How governmental crisis decisions ``happen''	51	(5)
From decisions to responses: the importance of crisis coordination	56	(7)
Putting crisis leadership in its place	63	(6)
Meaning making: crisis management as political communication	69	(22)
Crisis communication as politics	69	(1)
Crisis communication in a mediated political world	70	(8)
The battle for credibility	78	(4)
Meaning-making strategies: symbolic crisis management	82	(5)
Conclusion	87	(4)
End games: crisis termination and accountability	91	(24)
It ain't over till it's over	91	(2)
The political challenge of crisis termination	93	(6)
Crisis termination and the challenges of accountability	99	(4)
Blame games and the politics of meaning making	103	(8)
Accountability, blame games, and democracy	111	(4)
Learning from crises and the politics of reform	115	(22)
Never again!	115	(2)
Learning from crisis	117	(5)
Change without learning: crisis as opportunity for reform	122	(8)
Implementing lessons of crisis: an impossible task?	130	(2)
The perils of opportunity: from crisis-induced reforms to reform-induced crises	132	(5)
How to deal with crisis: lessons for prudent leadership	137	(21)
Introduction	137	(1)
Grasping the nature of crises	138	(2)
Improving crisis sense making	140	(4)
Improving crisis decision making	144	(4)
Improving crisis meaning making	148	(2)
Improving crisis termination	150	(2)
Improving crisis learning and reform craft	152	(4)
Preparing for crises: concluding reflections	156	(2)
References	158	(18)
Index	176