Bengt Sundelius

Crisis Management Europe: An Integrated Regional Research and Training Program

This article describes the Crisis Management (CM) Europe program that seeks to produce scientific knowledge that can be used also in order to train practitioners to cope more effectively with national and regional crises. Initiated in 1997 with a focus on the Baltic Sea area, the program has recently been broadened to cover all of Europe. The program documents and analyzes specific cases of national and regional crises. It relies upon a contextually grounded process tracing strategy for case reconstruction and dissection derived from relevant literatures in political science, psychology, and organizational sociology. To facilitate comparison and cumulation of case findings, a systematic four-step research procedure has been developed. Ten analytical themes of potential interest to both scholars and practitioners are identified as targets for structured focused comparison. More than a hundred cases have been studied by researchers working in research teams based in many European countries. Training tools have been successfully deployed in training practitioners from more than a dozen countries. An ongoing dialogue between academics and practitioners from across the Continent promises to make a contribution toward bridging the gap between these two different communities.

Resolve, Accept, or Avoid: Effects of Group Conflict on Foreign Policy Decisions

Groups are pervasive decision units in governments. Legislative committees, cabinets, military juntas, politburos of ruling parties, and executive councils are all candidates. The operation of many government ministries and agencies suggests that groups are also frequently at the core of the bureaucratic process. Coordination between bureaucracies creates both ad hoc and standing interdepartmental committees and boards that serve as decision units. In governments, groups usually convene to cope with problems. Such policy problems typically involve complex, cognitive tasks with no single correct answer. If no one individual alone has the authority to act on behalf of a government, then we must turn to alternative decision units. As we have just observed, another possible, and frequently encountered, configuration is the single group. By a single group we mean an entity of two or more people all of whom interact

Crisis management revisited: A new agenda for research, training and capacity building within Europe

Fifteen years ago we presented an agenda for crisis management research and training in Europe, here that article is revisited through a comprehensive review of social science scholarship in the field. Both the discourses on risk and crisis ‘management’ and on crisis ‘politics’ are surveyed in an effort to show the connect between knowledge and policy agendas for capacity building. Priority areas for European research are identified and discussed. The vital roles of research-based education and experience-based training to foster enhanced crisis management practices are noted. Independent yet policy-focused centres of crisis management scholarship are encouraged and needed. These should be linked through a transnational network to support a common ‘rapid reflection’ force in service of European leadership, when it matters the most.

Crisis management in transitional democracies : The Baltic experience

In this article we open the black box of governance in the new democracies by examining episodes where these governments are confronted with urgent threats that require swift and decisive state responses. This provides a unique insight into how political and administrative decision-making actually takes place. It enables us to analyse and evaluate the performance of the new institutions at times when it matters most. Specifically, we discuss how three of these new democracies, the Baltic states, have dealt with risks and crises in vital societal and political domains such as health and safety, public order, economic management and foreign policy. All belong to the core of the classic state functions.

Interdependence and Foreign Policy Management in Sweden and Finland

This study examines the implications of interdependence for the national institutions placed between the international and the domestic arenas of policy-making. These foreign affairs communities are hypothesized to be affected in several ways by the pressures of complex interdependence: The expanding scope of issues and the numerous actors engaged at home make for increased management complexity. The decentralization of the handling of foreign relations contributes to increased concern over national coordination of foreign policy. A survey of contemporary evidence from studies of the United States and some West European states seems to support these trends. A detailed empirical analysis over time of Finland and Sweden gives further supporting evidence. However, no dramatic trend toward a loss of central control of foreign relations can be discerned in the two cases examined. The persistently vital role of the traditional elements of foreign policy-making is notable also under conditions of international interdependence and domestic complexity. The mutually supporting relationship between the external and internal dimensions of the active state of the postwar era is emphasized as an explanation for the changes noted in the foreign affairs communities. The importance of building widely accepted theoretical generalizations on an empirical base broader than that of the special circumstances of the United States is illustrated by this comparative study.

Crisis Management An Agenda for Research and Training in Europe

Developments during this decade have transformed the character of the European security setting from one of relative political stability to a condition of considerable turbulence within its Central and Eastern regions. With clear trends toward increased interdependence across national boundaries and between sector areas, turbulence in any part of Europe will tend to generate conditions of considerable political concern also for governments in the rest of the continent. The strong impact of modern, transnational media coverage accentuates and widens the impact of such crisis-generating events. As a topic for collaborative European political science research, international crisis studies stand out as theoretically important and practically relevant.

The Essence of Groupthink

Whatever its label-ad hoc committee, special action group, task force-the small decision unit is frequently the locus of important foreign policy activity. Small group deliberations are involved in virtually every phase of the decision process, ranging from information collection and assessment to option identification and recommendation to implementation and post-decision evaluation. In many cases, the small decision group is the principal and final decision body itself (p. 251).

Das Primat der Neutralitätspolitik: Building Regimes at Home

Sundelius, B. Das Primat der Neutralitätspolitik: Building Regimes at Home. Coop eration and Conflict, XXIV, 1989, 163-178. In this article the strategies used by the traditional foreign policy chief to control the passageway between the foreign and domestic arenas of public activity will be discussed. The paper focuses on the domestic struggle over the conduct of foreign policy. Drawing on the works of Charles Kegley and Robert Keohane, it is argued that the continued prominence of the Swedish Foreign Ministry in this sector can be understood in the context of the persistence of a well-entrenched decision regime built around the concept of neutrality. The apparent ability of this traditional gatekeeper to dominate this internal management process also in the face of the decentralizing pressures associated with interdependence will be explained in terms of the decision regime concept. The study contributes to an understanding of how international developments affect the internal organizational life of a state. Further study into the domestic roles of the international guardians of the national interest in other states, too, may be warranted. Regime-building may facilitate international cooperation or national policy coordination. It may also help perpetuate the influence of hegemonic actors in the international system and within a domestic setting. The unmasking of the attributes of decision regimes in various states or in various international issue areas would seem to be an important task for a political scientist.

Sweden: Secure Neutrality:

Swedens recent record of peaceful external relations is often contrasted with the costly and, in the end, futile attempts during earlier centuries to play power politics through wars and alliances. This experience has served to underline the importance of national defense for a credible neutrality posture. Defense expenditures are considerable. The comprehensive nature of national defense and the economic dimension of security have been stressed. Sweden shares strong economic links with the Western economies. As a result of affluence throughout the postwar era and the recognition of the importance of the Western economic channels for this prosperity, official neutrality has interfered only marginally with the private pursuit of commerce and finance. This liberal attitude toward international exchanges has included items of strategic significance, such as advanced technology, arms, and ammunition. Sweden shares with other Nordic nations an inclination for marked visibility in global issues and arenas, hoping to promote international change both in North-South issues and in East-West negotiations. The classic definition of the Swedish foreign policy doctine is freedom from alliances in peace aiming for neutrality in war.

Book Review : Erik Solem: The Nordic Council and Scandinavian Integration. Praeger Special Studies, New York 1977. 197 pp

views of various elite groups on Nordic cooperation, and gives some concluding suggestions for reforming the Nordic cooperation structures. In particular, the author points out the initiatory role of the Nordic Council and shows how this regional parliamentary body has promoted cooperation schemes in numerous functional areas. Canadian by birth, the author is clearly bent on not merely offering a descriptive view of Nordic cooperation but also on tying this case of regional collaboration to the prevalent theories of regional integration (pp. 13, 161). He feels that the generally accepted ideas of regional integration processes could be further refined and broadened by including the Nordic experiences in these models. Similarly, the Nordic case could best be understood and evaluated in terms of these concepts and theories of regional collaboration. This ambition to be theoretically relevant is particularly welcome, as it has not been so common in studies on Nordic cooperation. Unfortunately, Erik Solem’s theoretical effort does not fulfil one’s expectations in this regard. The main weakness with the theoretical portion of the book is that the author has concentrated his analysis of integration theory