Crisis Management in a Polycentric Nordic Local Democracy (POLYGOV)

The Nordic municipalities are important in dealing with crises in society. Strategies may be adopted centrally, but they are implemented locally. The POLYGOV project is a comparative study of the crisis management, organisation and functioning of local democracies in Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark against the backdrop of the divergent handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The thesis guiding the project is that the countries' institutional choices with respect to local and regional governance are important determining factors for their capacity to organise, coordinate and manage the pandemic.

The project compares local and regional coordination and management strategies employed as the pandemic has unfolded from March 2020 to date, including the vaccination strategies.

Comparative analysis

The uniqueness of the project is that it takes advantage of the exceptional learning potential inherent in a comparative analysis of institutional data and data on actual crisis behaviour in the Nordic governance systems. The overall goal is to identify the differences in the Nordic countries’ handling of the pandemic and the outcomes thereof and to relate these differences to policy, governance, organisation and management.

The outcome variables are inequality in health security (illness, death and vaccination) and social security (economic and social measures).

Four perspectives

The project focuses on four perspectives: legal, health, governance and organizational. The empirical basis is legal sources, quantitative data (surveys and register data) and strategic case studies.

The project will provide knowledge on how to maintain sustainable democratic local and regional governance in a crisis. As part of the responses to the pandemic, we must maintain the inclusive Nordic welfare models providing public health, social security, equality and economic growth.

The research team consists of scholars from nine Nordic universities in five Nordic countries, including the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland.

Partner institutions

University of Oslo, Norway
University of Agder, Norway
Linköping University, Sweden
University of Akureyri, Iceland
University of Helsinki, Finland
VIVE - Det Nationale Forsknings- og Analysecenter for Velfærd, Denmark
University of the Faroe Islands, Faroe Islands
University of Greenland, Greenland

Publications

Haug, A.V. (red.) (2024). Crisis Management, Governance and COVID-19. Pandemic Policy and Local Government in the Nordic Countries. Edward Elgar (elgaronline.no)

Ackrén, M. (2024). Greenland. In Are V. Haug (ed.) Crisis Management, Governance and COVID-19. Pandemic Policy and Local Government in the Nordic Countries. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Ackrén, M. (2024). The Åland Islands. In Are V. Haug (ed.) Crisis Management, Governance and COVID-19. Pandemic Policy and Local Government in the Nordic Countries. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Baldersheim, H. & Haug, A.V. (2024). COVID pandemic and the Nordic model of local governance - high stakes, high risks. In Are V. Haug (ed.) Crisis Management, Governance and COVID-19. Pandemic Policy and Local Government in the Nordic Countries. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Baldersheim, H. & Haug, A.V. (2024). Towards Place-Sensitive Crisis Management? Pandemic Policies in Five Nordic Countries. In: New Perspectives on Intergovernmental Relations. Palgrave Studies in Sub-National Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Baldersheim, H., & Haug, A. V. (2024). Multi-level governance: a helping hand from the state, or centralisation of crisis responses? In Are V. Haug (ed.) Crisis Management, Governance and COVID-19. Pandemic Policy and Local Government in the Nordic Countries. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Baldersheim, H., Haug, A.V. & Eythórsson G.T. (2024): Citizen trust in local government in the Nordic Countries during the COVID-19 Pandemic. In Are V. Haug (ed.) Crisis Management, Governance and COVID-19. Pandemic Policy and Local Government in the Nordic Countries. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Baldersheim, H., Haug, A.V., Hye, L. & Øgård, M. (2024). Norway: decentralised crisis management. In Are V. Haug (ed.) Crisis Management, Governance and COVID-19. Pandemic Policy and Local Government in the Nordic Countries. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Eythórsson, G. T. (2024). Iceland: COVID-19 handling strategy in Iceland: centralised and expert-led. In Are V. Haug (ed.) Crisis Management, Governance and COVID-19. Pandemic Policy and Local Government in the Nordic Countries. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Foged, S. K., & Houlberg, K. (2024). Denmark - centralised crisis management and loyal implementation". In Are V. Haug (ed.) Crisis Management, Governance and COVID-19. Pandemic Policy and Local Government in the Nordic Countries. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Garcia, F., Järnland, E., Nordensvärd, J., Sommar, C., & Wihlborg, E. (2024). Sweden: relaxed crisis management. In Are V. Haug (ed.) Crisis Management, Governance and COVID-19. Pandemic Policy and Local Government in the Nordic Countries. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Godenhjelm, S. (2024). Finland: prepared yes, but sufficiently agile? In Are V. Haug (ed.) Crisis Management, Governance and COVID-19. Pandemic Policy and Local Government in the Nordic Countries. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Godenhjelm, S., & Ackrén, M. (2024). The chain of municipal governance in crisis. In Are V. Haug (ed.) Crisis Management, Governance and COVID-19. Pandemic Policy and Local Government in the Nordic Countries. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Haug, A. V., & Baldersheim, H. (2024). Conclusions and implications. In Are V. Haug (ed.) Crisis Management, Governance and COVID-19. Pandemic Policy and Local Government in the Nordic Countries. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Haug, A. V., Baldersheim, H., & Sefton, T. (2024). How (un)reasonable were the pandemic measures according to citizens? In Are V. Haug (ed.) Crisis Management, Governance and COVID-19. Pandemic Policy and Local Government in the Nordic Countries. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Haug, A. V., Nordensvärd, J., & Wihlborg, E. (2024). Civil society: a resource for local crisis governance? In Are V. Haug (ed.) Crisis Management, Governance and COVID-19. Pandemic Policy and Local Government in the Nordic Countries. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Heggebø, K., & Pedersen, A. W. (2024). How severe was the COVID-19 pandemic in the Nordic countries? In Are V. Haug (ed.) Crisis Management, Governance and COVID-19. Pandemic Policy and Local Government in the Nordic Countries. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Heggebø, Kristian ; Pedersen, Axel West (2023). The Norwegian Welfare State Adjusting to Crisis: Temporary Changes in Unemployment Benefit Regulations during the COVID-19 Pandemic and their Long-Term Implications. Takle, Marianne; Vedeler, Janikke Solstad; Schoyen, Mi Ah; Bøhler, Kjetil Klette; Falch-Eriksen, Asgeir (Red.). Citizenship and Social Exclusion at the Margins of the Welfare State. s. 48-63. Routledge.

Heggebø, Kristian; Elstad, Jon Ivar (2024). Health-related exit from employment before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Norway: Analysis of population-wide register data 2013–2021. 10 s. SSM - Population Health. Vol. 25.

Houlberg, K., & Foged, S. K. (2024). Who contributed and to what extent? In Are V. Haug (ed.) Crisis Management, Governance and COVID-19. Pandemic Policy and Local Government in the Nordic Countries. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Hye, L., & Øgård, M. (2024). Leadership at the apex in times of crises: who is running the show? In Are V. Haug (ed.) Crisis Management, Governance and COVID-19. Pandemic Policy and Local Government in the Nordic Countries. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Hye, L., & Øgård, M. (2024). Modes of local crisis management: is there a Nordic model? In Are V. Haug (ed.) Crisis Management, Governance and COVID-19. Pandemic Policy and Local Government in the Nordic Countries.

Justinussen, J. C. S., & Olavson, R. (2024). The Faroese COVID-19 response: testing and soft law". In Are V. Haug (ed.) Crisis Management, Governance and COVID-19. Pandemic Policy and Local Government in the Nordic Countries. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Nguyên Duy, I., & Stokstad, S. (2024). Legal framework and rule of law. In Are V. Haug (ed.) Crisis Management, Governance and COVID-19. Pandemic Policy and Local Government in the Nordic Countries. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Nordensvärd J, Sefton T, Godenhjelm S. Interpreting the state–citizen nexus in contemporary Nordic legal and social citizenship: the case of divergence in restriction on freedom of movement as a mitigation policy in the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy. 2023;39(1):28-41.

Nordensvärd, J., Sommar, C., & Wihlborg, E. (2024). The communicative climate: municipal leaders’ experiences. In Are V. Haug (ed.) Crisis Management, Governance and COVID-19. Pandemic Policy and Local Government in the Nordic Countries. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Wihlborg, E., Garcia, F. & Haug, A.V. (2024). Keep a distance - go online! Digitalisation for crisis responses and its lasting consequences. In Are V. Haug (ed.) Crisis Management, Governance and COVID-19. Pandemic Policy and Local Government in the Nordic Countries. Edward Elgar Publishing.