Arjen Boin, Ph.D. School of Governance, Utrecht University

1. Thinking the Unthinkable: The Limits of Traditional Crisis Management and the Necessity for New Approaches Arjen Boin, Ph.D. School of Governance, Utrecht University Public Administration Institute, Louisiana State University

2. Outline • Introduction • Future Shocks and Transboundary Crises • The Challenges of Transboundary Crisis Management • Implications for Institutional Design

3. The New World of Crisis Chernobyl, Kobe, Mad Cows, Canadian Ice Storms, Buenos Aires blackout, 9/11, SARS, Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, China Earthquake (2008); H1N1 flu epidemic; Financial crisis, BP oil spill, Icelandic Ash, Fukushima; EHEC

4. Defining Transboundary Crises • We speak of a transboundary crisis when the functioning of multiple, life-sustaining systems or critical infrastructures is acutely threatened and the causes of failure remain unclear.

5. Characteristics of TC Transboundary crises • Pose an urgent threat to core values, critical infrastructures • Bring deep uncertainty: Causes are not clear, unpredictable trajectory • Cross geographic and functional boundaries • Challenge governmental structures: No ownership • Generate periods of intense politicization • Play up tensions between public and private

6. Increased Frequency: Driving Trends • Changing threat agents • Increased societal vulnerability

7. Increased societal vulnerability • Growing complexities and interdependencies • Heightened mobility • Changing societal and political climate • Urbanization • Concentration of assets

8. Changing Threat Agents • (Bio) Technology jumps • New forms of terrorism • Climate change • Global power shifts

9. Paradoxes • While public leaders can do less to prevent crises, they are increasingly held responsible. But they often do not know what to do (or what the public expects of them). • Trends increase vulnerability of modern societies, while increasing crisis management capacity (more can be done than ever before).

10. In Summary: • Prevention is hard if not impossible • New forms of adversity are likely • Failure is not an option (politically, socially and economically) • Government is not geared towards dealing with transboundary crises What does that mean for crisis management?

11. Key analytical distinctions • Operational v. Strategic • Routine Emergencies v. Unimaginable Crises • Localized v. Transboundary Threats

12. Critical constraints • The symbolic need for a command & control myth • The institutional vulnerability of modern mega-cities • The culture of the risk society • The politics of crisis management

13. Challenges for Strategic Crisis Management • Preparing in the face of indifference • Making sense of crisis developments • Managing large response networks • Meaning making: What’s the story? • Accountability: Restoring trust after crisis

14. Task 1: Preparing for Crisis • The costs of permanent preparedness • Planning vs flexibility • The politics of preparedness

15. Task 2: Sense-making • The crucial question: How to recognize a crisis? • Answer: It’s surprisingly hard.

16. Why sense-making is hard • We lack the knowledge and tools to understand, map, and track TBCs • Information has to be shared across organizational, sectoral, and geographical boundaries • Psychological factors limit individual and group capacity to recognize and grasp Black Swans

17. Task 3: Managing large response networks • Working with limited information • Making critical decisions in authority vacuum • Communicating to a confused and distrustful public • Coordinating across borders

18. Task 4: Meaning-making • What’s the story? Reducing public and political uncertainty • Bush after 9/11 v. Bush after Katrina • Core claim: it’s not about the true story, it’s about the best communicated story • It is hard to explain a TBC without undermining the legitimacy of complex, interdependent systems

19. Task 5: Crisis termination • Crisis: It ain’t over till it’s over (Katrina) • Operational termination v. political closure • Key lesson: political closure depends on accountability dynamics • How to organize accountability across boundaries?

20. A Challenge of Design? • Rise of transboundary crises • “Impossible” crisis management challenges • Bounded bureaucracies: not designed to deal with crises, certainly not for the crises of the 21st century • What needs to be done?

21. Institutional Design Options • Building resilient societies • Building transboundary crisis management capacity: • Supranational • Inter-agency

22. The Promise of Resilience • Resilience: the magical solution • Modernization undermines and facilitates resilience • Primary condition: trust (social capital)

23. Resilience: The Feasible Option Rapid recombination of available resources by: • Citizens • First-line responders • Operational leaders • Requires reconceptualization of crisis leadership

24. Leadership for Resilience • Support and facilitate emerging resilience • Organize outside forces • Explain what is happening • Initiate long-term reconstruction Bottom line: Immediate relief is not an option

25. Engineering resilience: A leadership responsibility • Basic response mechanisms in place* • Training potential responders (how to think for themselves) • Continuous exercising • Planning as process • Create mobile units media-style • Prepare for long-term aftermath • Create (international) expert network

26. Creating Dynamic Capacity • Shared cognition • Surge capacity • Networked coordination • Formal boundary-spanning structures

27. 1. Shared cognition • Detection/surveillance systems • Analytical capacity • Real-time communication • Decision support systems

28. 2. Transboundary Surge Capacity • Professional first responders (who can operate across boundaries) • Supply chain management • Fast-track procedures • Integrated command center

29. 3. Networked coordination • Shared language • Known partners, mutual knowledge • A culture of collaboration • Mutual trust

30. National Incident Management System (NIMS) • Builds on successes of ICS (developed for and by the fire-fighting community) • Offers a shared structure, professional language, way of working • Built around defined authority relations, functional organization, modular approach • Rapidly institutionalized across the US (Katrina v. Gustav)

31. NIMS: Fit for TBCs? • Designed for local events, dealt with by local/regional response organizations • ICS has not been systematically evaluated (effectiveness remains unproven) • Military/uniformed character • Unclear how ICS can be used during TBCs such as epidemics, terrorist attacks or financial crises

32. 4. Formal boundary-spanning structures • Defining authority • Rules for collaboration, sharing resources • Rules and mechanisms for up and down-scaling • Rules for initiation and termination

33. U.S. National Response Framework (2008) • Defines responsibilities, structures and procedures for large-scale disasters • All hazards approach • Strategic perspective

34. US Response: Structures and Principles • All disasters are local • The state is the primary actor • Feds can help, but only if the states want it • NRF prescribes procedures for requesting help and scaling up • Embrace of NIMS

35. NRF: Pros and Cons • Concerted effort to define responsibilities • Formally sound • Sound policy for training and practice But… • All difficult problems are placed at the state level • Not always clear who is in charge • No attention for international dimension of TBC

36. What does the EU have available? • An unnoticed success story • A wide variety of capacities (mechanisms, venues, agencies) • Recent developments: The Solidarity Clause, Reorganization of Commission DGs (Internal Security, EEAS, strengthening of ECHO); Erasing of Internal-external divide

37. EU Advantages… • Wide range of competences • Strong on civilian capacities • Skilled at cooperation and coordination • Trusted venues • Single contact point • Set to grow

38. EU Disadvantages… • Incomplete, fragmented competences • Unclear political commitment; politics will affect CM • Leadership is a ‘hot potato’ • Communication is difficult; multiculturalism

39. In summary: Future design challenges • More TBCs are likely • Contemporary government structures are ill suited • Needed: TBCM capacity & enhanced resilience • Required: (Re)design of institutions

40. Thank you!