Imagining the next pandemic: Finnish preparedness for chronic transboundary crises before and during COVID-19

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, infectious disease experts had postulated that the next pandemic is only a matter of time, and Finland, among other nations, had prepared for it. Yet the COVID-19 pandemic crossed the customary political, functional, and temporal boundaries of crisis management to a surprising degree. This study analyses pandemic preparedness among Finnish infectious disease experts at the central government level before and during the COVID-19 pandemic (2017–2021). The study is based on interview material, participant observation in the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare's infectious disease unit in 2017, and health security-related document analysis. By analyzing expert perceptions of preparedness in two points of time, the study provides insights on the challenges that increasingly transboundary crises have posed for preparedness efforts. The experts perceived that pandemic preparedness would benefit from a more generic approach to planning and from more comprehensive risk assessments and policy advice. The analysis shows that Finnish crisis management had overlooked the extent of transboundedness of present-day crises and is lacking consideration of how crises turn into chronic conditions that deplete capacities over time. The crisis man.agement regime needs to develop structures to better analyze systemic risks and to extend its timeframe to cover long-term crises. © 2023 The Authors. Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Policy Studies Organization.

New development: Strategic planning in interesting times—From inter-crisis to intra-crisis responses

This article discusses how emerging types of crises provide opportunities for strategic planning as a form of intra-crisis response. The article supplements existing literature and approaches to strategic planning that conventionally emphasize its value in relatively more stable conditions or mostly as a platform for pre-crisis preparedness. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. IMPACT: As an intensive, long-term oriented and deliberative process, strategic planning is generally viewed as an essential practice in the public sector, yet mostly in relatively stable or non-crisis contexts. However, emerging crisis types (such as ‘creeping crises') come with a novel mixture of features that disrupt conventional norms of public administration, crisis governance and policy-making. Drawing on the theories of creeping crises, strategic planning and empirical observations, the author explains how such crises create windows of opportunity for intra-crisis strategic planning. In such crisis conditions, practitioners should dedicate sufficient time to undertake intra-crisis strategic planning to drive crisis policy-making and crisis governance, rather than engaging in ad hoc and stopgap crisis responses. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

How does policy learning take place across a multilevel governance architecture during crises?

Policy learning plays a significant role in shaping policy during crises. While scholarship has explored many of the mechanisms and outcomes of such learning, little is known about how policy learning takes place across different levels of a multilevel governance architecture. This is despite their prevalence and influence on crisis responses. Using a case of the Belgian COVID-19 policy response, we explore how policy learning takes place across different levels of multilevel governance within creeping crises, focusing on epistemic policy learning (learning from experts) as one of the most pronounced learning types within such contexts. By means of document analysis, supplemented by primary source data from expert and senior official interviews, we offer an exploratory account of how learning took place at the national and subnational levels. Our findings reveal how the inherent features of the COVID-19 crisis, and the existing multilevel governance architecture broke the policy learning process into smaller heterogenous learning processes at different levels. We find that decentralised approaches to learning provided the space for customised, yet often fragmented policy responses. We also find that institutional legacies, varying degrees of policymaker control over learning, and absence of common approaches to structuring and designing learning processes led policymakers in different jurisdictions to engage in varying policy learning processes. We take stock of these different learning processes and highlight their key features. We conclude by highlighting the implications of these findings for policy learning theory and practice.

A creeping crisis when an urgent crisis arises: The reprioritization of plastic pollution issues during COVID‐19

Single‐use plastics (SUPs) are increasingly polluting terrestrial, coastal, and marine habits, contributing to the creeping “plastic crisis.” The COVID‐19 pandemic provided a window of opportunity for decision makers to change the degree of urgency and responsiveness to this crisis and for policy entrepreneurs and industry who are against reducing plastic consumption to influence decision makers to change their position on various plastic‐related issues. Hygiene/health concerns have been used as a justification by governments and industry to increase the use of SUPs resulting in a reversal in, or a reprioritization of, policy decisions. Through the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF), I examine how creeping crises become secondary to urgent crises through agenda setting that is influenced and leveraged by policy entrepreneurs. I explore examples of such plastic policy decisions finding that they have been politically driven and influenced by entrepreneurs and industry rather than being primarily based on health concerns.Related ArticlesDiaz‐Kope, Luisa, and John C. Morris. 2022. “Why Collaborate? Exploring the Role of Organizational Motivations in Cross‐sector Watershed Collaboration.” Politics & Policy 50(3): 516â€"39. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12470.Gerlach, John David, Laron K. Williams, and Colleen E. Forcina. 2013. “The Science‐Natural Resource Policy Relationship: How Aspects of Diffusion Theory Explain Data Selection for Making Biodiversity Management Decisions.” Politics & Policy 41(3): 326â€"54. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12017.Neill, Katharine A., and John C. Morris. 2012. “A Tangled Web of Principals and Agents: Examining the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill through a Principalâ€"Agent Lens.” Politics & Policy 40(4): 629â€"56. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2012.00371.x.Alternate :Una crisis progresiva cuando surge una crisis urgente: La repriorización de los problemas de contaminación plástica durante el COVID‐19Los plásticos de un solo uso (SUP) están contaminando cada vez más los hábitos terrestres, costeros y marinos, lo que contribuye a la progresiva "crisis del plástico". La pandemia de COVID‐19 brindó una ventana de oportunidad para que los tomadores de decisiones cambien el grado de urgencia y capacidad de respuesta a esta crisis y para los empresarios de políticas y la industria que están en contra de reducir el consumo de plástico para influir en los tomadores de decisiones para cambiar su posición sobre varios temas relacionados con el plástico. Los gobiernos y la industria han utilizado las preocupaciones de higiene/salud como justificación para aumentar el uso de SUP, lo que ha dado lugar a una reversión o una nueva priorización de las decisiones políticas. A través del Marco de Corrientes Múltiples (MSF, por sus siglas en inglés), examinamos cómo las crisis progresivas se vuelven secundarias frente a las crisis urgentes a través del establecimiento de una agenda que es influenciada y aprovechada por los empresarios de políticas. Exploramos ejemplos de tales decisiones sobre políticas de plástico y descubrimos que han sido impulsadas políticamente e influenciadas por empresarios y la industria en lugar de basarse principalmente en preocupaciones de salud.Alternate :紧急危机发生时的慢性危机:2019å† çŠ¶ç—…æ¯'病期间塑料污æŸ"问题的优先次序调整一次性塑料(SUP)越来越多地污æŸ"陆地、沿海å'Œæµ·æ´‹çŽ¯å¢ƒï¼Œä¸ºæ…¢æ€§â€œå¡‘料危机”作贡献。2019å† çŠ¶ç—…æ¯'ç—…(COVID‐19)大流行为决策者提供了一个机会之窗，以改变对这场危机的紧迫程度å'Œå"åº”程度，并为反对减少塑料消费的政策企业家å'Œè¡Œä¸šæä¾›æœºä¼šï¼Œä»¥å½±å"å†³ç­–者改变其在不同塑料相关问题上的立场。卫生/健康问题已被政府å'Œè¡Œä¸šç”¨ä½œå¢žåŠ SUP使用的理由，从而导致政策决策发生逆转或优先次序调整。通过使用多源流框架(MSF)，我们分析了慢性危机如何在一个受政策企业家影å"å'Œåˆ©ç”¨çš„议程设置下次于 ´§æ€¥å±æœºã€‚我们探究了这类塑料政策决策的例子，发现决策的制定并非主要基于健康问题，而是受到企业家å'Œè¡Œä¸šçš„政治驱动å'Œå½±å"ã€‚

Hiding in Plain Sight: Conceptualizing the Creeping Crisis.

The COVID-19 crisis is a stark reminder that modern society is vulnerable to a special species of trouble: the creeping crisis. The creeping crisis poses a deep challenge to both academics and practitioners. In the crisis literature, it remains ill-defined and understudied. It is even harder to manage. As a threat, it carries a potential for societal disruption-but that potential is not fully understood. An accumulation of these creeping crises can erode public trust in institutions. This paper proposes a definition of a creeping crisis, formulates research questions, and identifies the most relevant theoretical approaches. It provides the building blocks for the systematic study of creeping crises.

La crisis de COVID­19 es un claro recordatorio de que la sociedad moderna es vulnerable a una especie especial de problemas: la crisis progresiva. La progresiva crisis plantea un profundo desafío tanto para los académicos como para los profesionales. En la literatura, permanece mal definida y poco estudiada. Es aún más difícil de manejar. Como amenaza, conlleva un potencial de disrupción social, pero ese potencial no se comprende completamente. La acumulación de estas crisis progresivas puede erosionar la confianza pública en las instituciones. Este artículo propone una definición de crisis progresiva, formula preguntas de investigación e identifica los enfoques teóricos más relevantes. Proporciona los componentes básicos para el estudio sistemático de las crisis progresivas.