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Crisis decision-making inside the core executive: Rationality, bureaucratic politics, standard procedures and the COVID-19 lockdown

The article explains how the unprecedented pandemic management decision to lock down the country came about, using the case of Norway and drawing on unique interview material from political and administrative executives. Urgency and precaution were the government’s primary considerations in March 20...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Askim, Jostein, Christensen, Tom
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9596384/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/09520767221129676
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author Askim, Jostein
Christensen, Tom
author_facet Askim, Jostein
Christensen, Tom
author_sort Askim, Jostein
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description The article explains how the unprecedented pandemic management decision to lock down the country came about, using the case of Norway and drawing on unique interview material from political and administrative executives. Urgency and precaution were the government’s primary considerations in March 2020, with proportionality and due process only peripheral decision premises. Voices of moderation were drowned out at critical moments to pave the way for a lockdown. Moreover, Norway’s lockdown decision lacked distinct and official agency, with none of the key actors able to say precisely when, where and by whom this decision of unprecedented size and scope had been taken. An interpretation using Graham Allison’s analytical models shows that the rational policy model most accurately captures the case. The suggested implication is that when senior political executives take active control of an ultra-high-stakes process, decisions are unlikely to be the product of political resultants or organisational output.
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spelling pubmed-95963842022-10-27 Crisis decision-making inside the core executive: Rationality, bureaucratic politics, standard procedures and the COVID-19 lockdown Askim, Jostein Christensen, Tom Public Policy Adm Review The article explains how the unprecedented pandemic management decision to lock down the country came about, using the case of Norway and drawing on unique interview material from political and administrative executives. Urgency and precaution were the government’s primary considerations in March 2020, with proportionality and due process only peripheral decision premises. Voices of moderation were drowned out at critical moments to pave the way for a lockdown. Moreover, Norway’s lockdown decision lacked distinct and official agency, with none of the key actors able to say precisely when, where and by whom this decision of unprecedented size and scope had been taken. An interpretation using Graham Allison’s analytical models shows that the rational policy model most accurately captures the case. The suggested implication is that when senior political executives take active control of an ultra-high-stakes process, decisions are unlikely to be the product of political resultants or organisational output. SAGE Publications 2022-10-21 /pmc/articles/PMC9596384/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/09520767221129676 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Review
Askim, Jostein
Christensen, Tom
Crisis decision-making inside the core executive: Rationality, bureaucratic politics, standard procedures and the COVID-19 lockdown
title Crisis decision-making inside the core executive: Rationality, bureaucratic politics, standard procedures and the COVID-19 lockdown
title_full Crisis decision-making inside the core executive: Rationality, bureaucratic politics, standard procedures and the COVID-19 lockdown
title_fullStr Crisis decision-making inside the core executive: Rationality, bureaucratic politics, standard procedures and the COVID-19 lockdown
title_full_unstemmed Crisis decision-making inside the core executive: Rationality, bureaucratic politics, standard procedures and the COVID-19 lockdown
title_short Crisis decision-making inside the core executive: Rationality, bureaucratic politics, standard procedures and the COVID-19 lockdown
title_sort crisis decision-making inside the core executive: rationality, bureaucratic politics, standard procedures and the covid-19 lockdown
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9596384/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/09520767221129676
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