Evolution of civil security systems: the case of three Central European countries

Abstract

National civil security systems (CSSs) are powerful risk management tools. They do, however, sometimes fail to adjust, as e.g. the Fukushima disaster demonstrates. Understanding the (mal)adaptation of CSSs is thus crucial. Yet, comprehensive analyses of the evolution of CSSs are not common. It is the aim of this paper to fill this gap and, more importantly, to identify the main causes of changes. This paper investigates how the CSSs of the Central European countries (Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland) have changed since their democratic transition in 1989. We aim to understand the role of the main drivers of change leading to the adaptation of the CSSs. Specifically, the impact of the so-called focusing events is investigated that are identified based on the OFDA/CRED International Disaster Database. We base our work on a review of legal acts, documents and interviews with experts and practitioners. We find common patterns in all three countries with a specific crisis being constitutive for the CSS change on the one hand and with the 'paradigmatic policy change' of 1989/1990 not playing a decisive role.

Response of Central European Civil Security Systems to the Economic Crisis

“…239/2000 Coll.). Since 2000, no major reform has taken place which would significantly affect the design of the Czech CSS (Brazova et al 2015).…”

“…Civil protection was codified in 1996 and became a part of a disaster management system in 1999, after the adoption of the Disaster Management Act (Takacs, Matczak 2013). The system changed significantly in 2000 when disaster management authorities were established (combining civil protection and state fire-fighting organizations) and then later, mostly due to the harmonization with EU law (see Brazova et al 2015). Recently, the civil security system underwent further changes towards more centralization and a greater role played by the Ministry of the Interior.…”

“…A strong role is now played by the National Directorate General for Disaster Management (NDGDM) under the Ministry of the Interior, which has a supervising position over all cooperating institutions involved in civil security (Takacs, Matczak 2013). Overall, these changes focused on both the efficiency and effectiveness of performance -the latter especially in response to the Ajka red mud sludge disaster of 2010 (Brazova et al 2015).…”

“…Currently, only Hungary has introduced a systematic assessment of civil security expenditures in terms of efficiency. While the Ajka disaster resulted in structural changes to the Hungarian civil security system (Brazova et al 2015), the particular stress made on efficiency (Takacs, Matczak 2013) has to be seen especially in the light of both the economic and the debt crisis. Of all V4 countries, Hungary was hit the hardest in this respect, which made the implementation of efficiency measures eventually inevitable.…”

“…The V4 seems to represent a reasonably good ground for comparison: Firstly, the CSSs of these countries exhibit similar development patterns both in form and time. They developed in response to the same stimuli, such as the political change in 1989, further integration into the European Union, or (from the perspective of crisis response) floods which are the prominent natural disaster in the region and have led to the adaptation of the CSSs in the past (see Brazova et al 2015). Moreover, although the structure of these CSSs and the underlying values are not identical, they differ from other EU countries such as Sweden, Great Britain or Italy (Bossong, Hegemann 2013).…”