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AbstractThe field of crisis and disaster studies has proliferated over the past two decades. Attention is bound to grow further as the world negotiates the prolonged challenges of the Covid‐19 pandemic. In this review, we provide an overview of the main foci, methods, and research designs employed in the crisis and disaster research fields in the period of 2001–2020. The review documents that the focus and methods used have not changed much over time. Single case studies and exploratory research prevail, the focus has shifted from preparedness to response, and methodological diversity is limited, but gradually increasing. Future challenges are to understand transboundary crisis management and creeping crises. Advancing the field calls for our community to put more effort in drawing lessons beyond the single case to uncover comparable and universal patterns that connect between events or phases, which help to theorize the multifaceted nature of crisis and disaster management.

Transcrisis aims to develop a solid understanding of the role of leaders in managing transboundary crises, and the requirements for ensuring an effective and legitimate crisis response. In addition to material and institutional requirements, leaders' policy ideas, peoples' preferences and public discourses play an important role in many of the seven phases of crisis management identified in this project, like for instance in the phase of detection, coordination, and especially meaning making and communication. Establishing the precise nature and effects of these 'soft' but influential factors in crisis management is notoriously difficult, for ideas, preferences and discourses are intangible phenomenon that cannot be observed directly (Fiske & Taylor 1991; Risse 1994). To be able to study these phenomenon and their effects on the effectiveness and legitimacy of crisis management, Transcrisis will make use of a method that was specifically designed to analyse such ideational factors: the method of Comparative Cognitive Mapping (CCM). CCM is a well-developed technique that has been successfully applied in many fields of study (Axelrod, 1976; Bougon, Weick & Binkhorst 1977; Curseu, Schalk & Schruijer 2010; Princen & Van Esch forthcoming; Van Esch 2012; 2014; Young & Schafer 1998). It may provide insight in the ideas and preferences of the various leaders involved in transboundary crisis management, but has also been used to study discourses and the way citizens think about the causes of, and potential solutions to crises. Through its various modes of analysis, CCM also enables a comparison between actors' and the evolution of ideas and discourses over time. As such, CCM provides an useful technique to apply in the various case-studies within the Transcrisis project and can be combined with techniques that provide insight in the material and institutional requirements for effective and legitimate crisis management. This guideline will provide an overview of the CCM technique as well as some basic ...

The parallel universe of cyberspace, created by computer networks, ones, and zeros, has changed the rules of the game. It would be inevitable for crisis management research to remain unaffected by the new challenges arising. The present article delves into the underexplored concept of cyber crises, by initiating an academic problematization of crisis conceptualization. Drawing from transboundary crisis management theory, it examines two major cyberattacks, the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack and the 2016 hacking of the DNC, and explores an empirical puzzle: why are these cases not characterized as crises even though they fit already existing definitions? The article contributes to the theory of transboundary crises by shedding light on previously overlooked cyber crisis characteristics and attempting to propose a definition of cyber crises. The way we perceive crises has a direct impact on how we manage them. Broadening the research agenda and understanding the concept of a cyber crisis could pave the way for a more effective and proactive response to new threats, which is what the following pages attempt to demonstrate.

Cooperation over transboundary environmental resources, water in particular, has been analyzed from various perspectives. Each study identifies the problems of cooperation differently and suggests different mechanisms to enhance it. Yet, the role of ambiguity, particularly significant in treaty design to resolve environmental disputes, has thus far been overlooked. Such a focus is warranted, since many international agreements regulating the use of natural resources are ambiguous in their schedule of resource delivery during crisis events or in their cost-sharing arrangements and may even include contradictory resource-allocation principles while remaining vague on how to settle the contradictions. This study aims to examine why, when, and how ambiguity is applied in agreements pertaining to natural resources, and water in particular. The Israeli—Jordanian peace agreement, which includes an annex on water-use regulation, is used as a case study. It was found that, under asymmetric power relations, when both sovereignty costs and uncertainty are high, several types of deliberate ambiguity were intentionally incorporated into the treaty. Some ambiguities allowed each side to present the treaty differently at home, thereby defusing domestic opposition, while others provided leeway to adjust the resource allocation during a future crisis without the need to renegotiate the treaty.

One of the most challenging environmental threats to the ten countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been the haze, the sickening and deadly cloud of smoky pollution caused by widespread burning of land and forests in Indonesia. This book examines both the threat and response to it by analysing environmental cooperation in Southeast Asia from an international regime perspective. Tracing the development of regional cooperation on the haze and evaluating the effectiveness of the cooperation, the author argues that the haze crisis, combined with the economic crisis of 1997, has profoundly challenged the ASEAN modus operandi, and resulted in ASEAN's efforts to establish an environmental regime to cope with environmental challenges. The emerging ASEAN haze regime is a unique case study of a regional environmental institution in multi-levelled global environmental governance. Based on in-depth original research, this case study is integrated into international relations, political science, and comparative political analysis literatures and contributes to a better understanding of processes within the regional organisation.

Transcrisis aims to develop a solid understanding of the role of leaders in managing transboundary crises and the requirements for ensuring an effective and legitimate crisis response. One of the seven crisis-management tasks that leaders need to perform is meaning-making. Meaning-making refers to the necessity to formulate a key message that offers an explanation of the threat, actionable advice, and a sense that leaders are in control of the situation (Boin, Cadar & Donnelley, 2016). Adequate meaning making is key to dealing with a crisis in an effective and legitimate fashion. This is especially important during transboundary crises as cultural, national, legal boundaries make shared meaning making more difficult and less routine. In its totality, Deliverable 3.2 will study meaning-making in nine member states at three different levels, using the method of cognitive mapping: the level of political and financial leaders, meaning making in the public discourse (Op-ed media sources) and meaning making by citizens (Survey). In the present report (D3.2a), we explore how political and financial leaders of nine European Union member states have made meaning of the Euro-crisis. The current three reports that will make up this deliverable will only contain quantitative analyses, the final report of WP3 will offer more in-depth and comparative analysis of the three level of meaning-making.

The notion that political developments in EU member states might threaten the integrity of the organization is as old as the EU – or rather EEC – itself. European integration was in no small part an effort by the original six member states to impose some restrictions on their own freedom of action in the aftermath of three decades of war and international crises. Pooling sovereignty would help Germany, Italy, France and the three Ben-Ne-Lux states achieve peace and prosperity, and safeguard democracy. Two of them were recent dictatorships. Enlargement in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s brought in both long-established democracies and the recently authoritarian Greece, Spain and Portugal. Despite one or two tense moments, such as the attempted coup d'état in Spain in 1981, all three new democracies consolidated rapidly. The EU is often accredited with playing an important part in this. After the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the prospect of enlargement to a dozen or more formerly communist dictatorship prompted new questions about how to ensure that these ex-authoritarian regimes could take their place in the EU's liberal democratic legal and normative system. The immediate result was the Copenhagen Criteria, laid down in the June 1993 European Council meeting in the Danish capital, which were designed to ensure that new member states were liberal democracies, respected human rights, had a functioning market economy and were capable of implementing the Acquis Communautaire. Combined with the obligation that all member states must be members of the Council of Europe, and a lengthy transition process, these rules should ensure that no new member state reversed its commitment to liberal democracy, free markets and the rule of law.

When the European Union took on ten new member states in 2004, it went through an unprecedented enlargement that raised a number of questions about the future of the EU. The previous enlargements, from the original six member states to nine, then ten, twelve and fifteen states never admitted more than three new members at a time and the new member states had long track records of liberal democracy and market economies – or, in the case of the new Mediterranean member states in the 1980s, at least the latter. The debate about enlargement to formerly communist regimes began as soon as the Berlin Wall fell, and even in its earliest version it centred on the potential effects of a big round of enlargement on the EU's capacity for governance and further integration.1 This coincided with a debate on the prospects for liberal democracy in terms of both party politics and public policy in the Europe's new democracies.2 Apart from the questions about whether a wider Europe might mean more or less deepening in terms of supranational governance and increasing the scope of the EU's competence, this debate also touched on the administrative capacity of the formerly communist states and their political will. The team put together by Paul Taggart and Alexs Szczerbiak focused on the latter question in particular, by examining the sources and consequences of popular and party-based Euroscepticism in both the old and new member states. The present policy brief takes the question debated by the Taggart and Szczerbiak team as a staring point: a dozen yeas after the first round of eastern enlargement, as Eurosceptic parties have come to power in some of the new member sates, has there been "backsliding" in the EU in terms of the states' commitments to liberal democracy?

Master's thesis in Risk Management and Societal Safety ; On June 17, 2017, a forest fire erupted in central Portugal that would bring severe consequences and greatly challenge the country's crisis management system. In order to understand why the crisis happened and how it unfolded, this thesis set out to study the transboundary nature of the crisis and the resilience of its crisis management. Based on this, the following research problem was established: "To what extent was the June 2017 forest fire in Portugal a transboundary crisis and to what extent was resilient crisis management achieved?" To find possible answers and formulate conclusions, research has been carried out using an explorative case-study approach. Seeing that collecting primary data was not an option, a choice was made to utilize qualitative document studies. Because of the inherent bias towards applying a single-method for collecting data, it was of great importance to ensure the data's reliability and validity through careful selection. Empirical data has been retrieved from various documents and reports, including the official independent investigation report requested by the Portuguese government, as well as reports from the EU. The theoretical parameters which gave focus to the research has been described and outlined in chapter 2. The theoretical framework presented in this chapter aimed to enhance the understanding of how different aspects pertaining to the crisis itself could influence the degree to which resilient crisis management is achieved. These aspects include crisis typologies, crisis phases, crisis management and crisis 'transboundedness'. Thereafter the challenges of transboundary crisis management were presented, with an emphasis on communication and coordination. Lastly, the theme of resilience is visited, with the theoretical framework accounting for both proactive and reactive resilience, as well as offering a set of factors which may influence the degree to which resilient crisis management can be achieved. Key findings from the study suggests that the June 2017 forest fire in central Portugal was very much so a transboundary crisis. This conclusion was reached by assessing the transboundary dimensions which were crossed during the crisis. Although the fire started in one municipality in central Portugal, by the time it was put out four days later it had affected seven municipalities, damaged dozens of buildings, and taken 65 lives in the process. The crisis called for coordination and cooperation across various response entities, both on local, regional, national and international levels, thereby also adding transboundary elements to the crisis management. In assessing the proactive and reactive resilience measures, key findings show a crisis management system which had the right intentions but lacked the political power to ensure that the crisis management system was prepared, thereby hampering response efforts once the crisis had manifested.

Transcrisis aims to develop a solid understanding of the role of leaders in managing transboundary crises and the requirements for ensuring an effective and legitimate crisis response. In addition to material and institutional requirements, leaders' policy ideas, peoples' preferences and public discourses play an important role in this. Establishing the precise nature and effects of these 'soft' but influential factors in crisis management is notoriously difficult, for ideas, preferences and discourses are intangible phenomenon that cannot be observed directly (Fiske & Taylor 1991; Risse-Kappen 1994). To be able to study these phenomenon and their effects on the effectiveness and legitimacy of crisis management, Transcrisis will make use of a method that was specifically designed to analyse such ideational factors: the method of Comparative Cognitive Mapping (CCM; Axelrod 1976; Bougon, Weick & Binkhorst 1977; Curseu, Schalk & Schruijer 2010; Princen & Van Esch forthcoming; Van Esch 2012; 2014; Young & Schafer 1998). This coding manual provides a practical methodological guideline that explains how to use the technique of CCM to uncover ideas and discourses. The manual offers valuable insights for other scholars resulting from our years of experience in using the technique. However, the practices described in the manual will be inspired by the research question of central to Work package 3 (WP3) of the TRANSCRISIS project in particular, and serve as a guide for studying the role and changes in the ideas and discourses that pertain to the management of the Euro crisis.

Decision 1082/2013 on Serious Cross-border Health Threats (Health Threats Decision) was adopted in 2013 with the aim of preparing for and responding to serious health threats. In this legislation, the European Union adopts an "all-hazards" approach which strongly relies on the exchange of information as a driver of regulatory activities. This article first demonstrates that the electronic systems of information exchange constitute a key tool in EU Health Crisis and Disaster Management ("EHCDM"). Second, it identifies the distinctive features of these mechanisms in the EU context: the reinforcement of a statutory policy shift towards securitisation of public health, the peculiarity of the EU composite administrative procedures as well as the facilitation of the quality of the sense-making activities. Finally, the article uncovers the possible problems which may affect the adequate functioning of EHCDM and argues the routes for further research. The piece links legal analysis with the interdisciplinary conceptual lens to offer an important contribution to closer characterisation of the EHCDM as a field in its own right together with a better understanding of the EU public health law and administration in the context of transboundary crisis management and health security governance.

Italy and Spain were the first countries affected by the shift of the pandemic epicentre from east to west. The rapid spread of the virus in allegedly similar social settings, the relatively high numbers of cases and casualties, and the adoption of drastic containment measures were similar in the two countries during the first wave of the pandemic. Both countries are enmeshed in an unstable political equilibrium at the centre, governed by recently established national political coalitions that have continuously been called into question and exposed to significant public debt. The two countries differ in the role of the executive vis-a-vis the legislative, and the tensions between central coordination and regional centrifugal forces. To improve the understanding of how the pandemic has influenced decision-making and crisis management, this article explains the relevance of institutional veto points, as well as differences between the two countries. There is room to match coordination, policy capacity and shared accountability through more collaborative governance.Points for practitionersGoverning a transboundary crisis that involves different governmental levels is about creating an effective coordination mechanism that clarifies responsibilities, avoiding those who may block decision-making processes (veto players) through being incentivized to do so due to the absence of adequate shared accountability systems. National and regional managers should realize that the separation of territorial powers not accompanied by political coordination jeopardizes policy capacity in both the short and long term.

Sweden's tourism industry stands out for its large contribution to the development of the national economy. The vast size of the country makes it possible to trace differences in incoming tourist flows from neighbouring countries. This circumstance accounts for the novelty of this study, which lies in viewing national tourism geography from the perspective of the theory of transboundary tourism-and-recreation region building. Interregional differences in the structure of incoming tourist flows help identify the country's cross-border tourism-and-recreation regions and delineate their borders. This research employs statistical and cartographic methods. The incoming tourist flow to Sweden grew steadily until 2020. However, the Covid-19 crisis has led to a drastic reduction in the number of incoming tourists. Based on the 2019 statistics, the findings confirm the existence of a developed transboundary tourism-and-recreation mesoregion that brings together Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. The formation boasts strong tourist links. There are another five cross-border tourism-and-recreation mesoregions: Sweden-Norway-Denmark, Middle Sweden-Norway, Sweden-Norway-Finland, Middle Sweden-Finland, and South Sweden-Finland. The number of tourists visiting cross-border mesoregions indicates the degree of development of the latter.

Under embargo until: 2022-02-13 ; This article examines how the transboundary coordination capacity between the military and the police has changed since the terrorist attacks in Norway in 2011. We address changes in the arrangements that regulate how the police can ask for assistance from the military during a crisis and how the military and the police cooperate to implement the regulations designed to protect important public buildings and facilities. The processes and the outcome are analyzed from a hierarchical perspective, a negotiation perspective and an institutional perspective. A main finding is that there are many transboundary coordination challenges, which can mainly be explained from a negotiation and a cultural perspective. Both path dependencies and negotiations constrained the process and led to incremental changes. ; acceptedVersion