Dan Hansén

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.

Effects of Buzzwords on Experiential Learning: The Swedish Case of ‘Shared Situation Awareness’

This article takes an interest in the effects of buzzwords in the lesson-drawing efforts of governmental bureaucracy. Buzzwords are viewed here as policy ideas for which policy makers are enthusiastic beyond subjecting them to critical scrutiny. They are in that sense detrimental to policy-oriented learning and lesson-drawing in the long run. They can, however, serve as heuristic devices in the short run; the reason for their usage and spreading may be that they pinpoint recurring structural problems (however, not solutions). This argument is corroborated by a case study on the effects of the buzzword ‘shared situation awareness’, which has been overly tractable in the Swedish crisis management system for a number of years.

Pressured to learn? Swedish police experiences of curbing organized crime

This research takes an interest in the polices capacity to learn and adapt in an ongoing policy failure. Using the literature on organizational learning and adaptation, it investigates how the police combine exploration of new possibilities and exploitation of old certainties. This article delves into the Swedish polices adaptation to a wave of organized and aggravated robberies that in the years around 2005 seemed out of control. It argues that the Swedish police need to create organizational ambidexterity by implementing a mix of exploitation and exploration, as well as engaging societal actors external to the police when old practices run dry. This means that the law and order sector needs to refine their competences, utilize new ideas, and promote innovation from companies and other authorities for dealing with the tasks at hand. Furthermore, the organizational theory tool-box has proven that it has great potential for diagnosing current learning and adaptation efforts within the law and order sector, as they happen.