Remember the Foundation, Keep the Faith, Find What Works, and Focus on the Future

In the COVID‐19 crisis, society pins its hopes on science to play an authoritative role in reducing uncertainty and ambiguity. But is science up to the task? This is far from self‐evident. The demands on science in times of crisis run counter to the values of good, normal science. Crisis science needs to be fast, univocal, personalized, and direct, while normal science is slow, contentious, collective, and sensitive to complexity. Science can only play its atypical role if it is staged in the public arena. Some patterns of staging stand out: personalization, visualization, and connection to lived experiences. So far, the staging of science has been successful, but it is fragile. The COVID‐19 crisis shows the potential of well‐staged forms of alliance between science and policy, but when the general assumption is that scientists will “solve” societal “problems,” the staging of science has gone too far.

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Staging Science: Authoritativeness and Fragility of Models and Measurement in the COVID‐19 Crisis

Dooren

Noordegraaf

2020

“…In contrast to the relaxed Swedish approach to its public health responses and soft mitigation strategy, leaving the handling to public health experts, and the United States’ slow response, no national lock down, lack of trust in government, and confrontational policy style, the Norwegian response worked pretty well (cf. Hall and Battaglio 2020).…”

Section: Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Balancing Governance Capacity and Legitimacy: How the Norwegian Government Handled the COVID‐19 Crisis as a High Performer

Christensen

Lægreid

2020

309

281

This essay addresses how the Norwegian government has handled the coronavirus pandemic. Compared with many other countries, Norway has performed well in handling the crisis. This must be understood in the context of competent politicians, a high‐trust society with a reliable and professional bureaucracy, a strong state, a good economic situation, a big welfare state, and low population density. The Norwegian government managed to control the pandemic rather quickly by adopting a suppression strategy, followed by a control strategy, based on a collaborative and pragmatic decision‐making style, successful communication with the public, a lot of resources, and a high level of citizen trust in government. The alleged success of the Norwegian case is about the relationship between crisis management capacity and legitimacy. Crisis management is most successful when it is able to combine democratic legitimacy with government capacity.

“…While there is recognition that people die in disasters, most emergency management in public administration literature focuses on building response capacity and resilience (Christensen, Lægreid, and Rykkja ). What we do know is that public servants shine in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges (Cohen, Eimicke, and Horan ; Hall and Battaglio ). Learning from cemetery managers can help expand our knowledge about deathcare in the field and include their views in lessons learned from the pandemic response.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“We've Cared for the Dead since We Started Caring”: COVID‐19 and Our Relationship to Public and Private Deathcare

Zavattaro

2020

The COVID‐19 pandemic has highlighted public organizations’ challenges related to deathcare. Within the emergency management literature, and specifically within public administration, there is a gap when it comes to planning past death. Using data from interviews with 35 municipal cemetery managers throughout the United States, I show how our unwillingness to talk about or plan for death, coupled with cemetery managers who are underfunded and often left out of emergency management planning processes, needs increased attention. While many deathcare best practices were deployed to respond to the virus, cemetery managers often are not part of the planning process.