Civil Protection Cooperation in the European Union

How Trust and Administrative Culture Matter for Crisis Management

Sten Widmalm, Charles F. Parker, Thomas Persson

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783030028589
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"This fine team of academics moves beyond mere descriptions of capacities, structures and processes to explain the effectiveness of Civil Protection in the EU. With their exploration of trust as a key factor, they deliver the best book so far on this critical topic." —Arjen Boin, Leiden University, the Netherlands "Grounded in unique and voluminous fieldwork within the EU's nascent community of civil protection practitioners and mechanisms, this timely study shows us that interpersonal and professional trust rooted in collegiate relationships is pivotal for bridging the different policy styles embedded in member states' administrative cultures and building much-needed cohesive, effective and resilient European crisis management capacity. A gem for crisis management and EU scholars alike." —Paul 't Hart, Utrecht University and Netherlands School of Public Administration, the Netherlands The EU and its member states have committed themselves to the protection of their citizens, and a Europe that protects must be able to respond effectively when disaster strikes. Utilizing unique survey data and interviews in nineteen EU member states, this book treats civil protection and crisis management as crucial cases for investigating which factors—such as trust, public-administration culture, and public-administration structure—facilitate or hinder effective EU cooperation. In addition to investigating the main divides and unifying patterns of cooperation that exist among the EU member states, the authors combine knowledge from crisis management studies together with insights from public and social capital studies to examine to what extent so-called 'software factors', such as culture, trust, and norms, matter for achieving effective civil protection cooperation and crisis management.

© The Author(s) 2019

Sten Widmalm, Charles F. Parker and Thomas PerssonCivil Protection Cooperation in the European UnionEuropean Administrative Governancehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02858-9_1

Begin Abstract

1. The Road to a Europe That Protects: Civil Protection, Trust, and the Culture of Public Administration in the EU

Sten Widmalm¹ , Charles F. Parker² and Thomas Persson¹

(1)

Department of Government, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

(2)

Department of Government Centre of Natural Hazards and Disaster Science (CNDS), Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

Sten Widmalm (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Charles F. Parker

Email: [email protected]

Thomas Persson

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

The EU and its member states have committed themselves to the protection of their citizens, and a Europe that protects must be able to respond effectively when disaster strikes. The expression of this goal can be found in the solidarity clause in the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, which establishes a legal obligation for the EU and its member states to assist each other when an EU country is the object of a terrorist attack or a natural or man-made disaster. To this end, the EU has created a civil-protection mechanism and an accompanying operational hub in the form of the Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC) which coordinates the response of the participating countries in the event of a crisis. Because the EU’s civil protection mission speaks to the EU’s entire project and is one of the most visible manifestations and tangible instruments of European solidarity, we treat it as a crucial case for investigating which factors—such as trust, public-administration culture, and public-administration structure—facilitate or hinder effective EU cooperation.

The many crises faced by the EU today, from terrorist attacks to secession movements, put the EU at a crossroads. In fact, how well the EU is able to handle its crises will help determine the future health of the EU. The very idea of the EU is today being questioned more than it has ever been since 1951. If the EU is able to manage its crises through cooperation and solidarity, a more unified EU can emerge. However, if the current crises—financial, refugee related, and those relating to increasingly severe weather events and extreme climate related phenomena—overwhelm the EU’s ability to solve problems and protect its citizens from harm, divisions will grow and the legitimacy of the EU will be called into question.

This book explores the challenges the EU and its member states face in order to achieve more effective cooperation in the quest to better protect its citizens, namely in the critical field of civil protection. It provides insights to what kind of cooperative structures exist in Europe in this issue area—in single countries, between countries, and at the EU level—and what role trust, shared norms, cooperative networks, and administrative culture play in how well the system functions. The book utilizes field-visits, interviews, and a large EU-wide survey among officials at civil-protection agencies throughout Europe and provides unique data on what aspects of civil protection are working well and what challenges lie ahead in areas that are more problematic.

We generate new empirical evidence on the actual functioning of EU civil-protection cooperation gathered through interviews conducted at the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Operations (DG ECHO) and in nineteen member states and through an extensive survey of 670 officials working with civil protection in seventeen member states. We then analyse this material through the prisms of administrative culture and social capital. We are able to provide evidence on the patterns of civil-protection cooperation in the EU, the effectiveness of EU civil-protection cooperation, and on the views of officials concerning the legitimacy of the EU’s efforts in this area. Prior to this study, little was known about how much trust practitioners working with civil protection actually placed in the EU’s efforts in this area or what mechanisms explain how they view the EU.

Institutions for civil protection are special. On the one hand they are supposed to coordinate multiple actors under extremely stressful conditions, such as natural disasters, pandemics, and terrorist attacks. On the other hand, they are supposed to prepare for crises and foresee new threats and challenges to the safety of citizens. Consequently, part of the time they are expected to behave like many other public administration institutions which carry out long term strategies in a relatively foreseeable way. But intermittently they are also expected to respond rapidly and appropriately to a variety of crises and transboundary events, such as natural disasters, environmental threats, major emergencies, epidemics, terrorism, migration, and the breakdown of critical infrastructure that demand that they act as a coherent emergency response team.

When we look at the EU, it is clear that there is great variation in how civil-protection institutions are structured. Civil protection involves a large variety of organizations and because there is no single model for how best to organize civil-protection activities, particularly in the EU context, we examine the different practices, traditions, relationships and cultures that shape civil-protection institutions and responses to crises in the EU. These differences pose challenges since crises so often have little or no respect for borders. Coordination between different actors will always be a challenge.

Within the context of the EU however it is natural to assume that coordination at the EU level should be the solution to such challenges. However, it is one thing to simply observe that cooperation is needed when there is an ash cloud, when rivers flood, when there is a forest fire, or when extremists attack innocent citizens. But bringing about such cooperation and making it work well is a major challenge. Sometimes the challenge lies in the nature of the crisis. However, more often, the challenge lies within the civil-protection institutions themselves. This means investigating the vital “software” factors of social capital and public-administration culture rather than simply examining the “hardware” factors of formal structures, functional capacities, and technical equipment. It is this challenge that is the focus of this book, and this is why the objects of analysis for this study are the lead agencies responsible for civil protection and crisis management in civil society in the EU member states and the central EU-coordinated institutions DG ECHO and the Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC). In particular, we investigate the role of the revised Civil Protection Mechanism in facilitating cooperation between the civil-protection agencies in the EU and with DG ECHO, including the central role played by the ERCC; thereby, allowing us to generate insights into the effectiveness and legitimacy of cooperation between national and EU-level authorities.

It is noteworthy that our research for this book was conducted after some very important post 2013 changes and developments that have taken place regarding the EU’s civil-protection cooperation, which due to timing could not be fully captured by past research in the field. Our interviews and surveys were carried out at an opportune time, from 2015 to 2017, which means our investigation is able to capture attitudes informed by early assessments of the revised EU Civil Protection Mechanism legislation, which was adopted in December 2013, the functioning of the Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC), which was launched in May 2013, and the strengthened European Emergency Response Capacity, which was adopted in October 2014. It is also notable that this research was carried out during a very trying time for the EU. In recent years, the EU has been buffeted by a number of crises, such as the Eurozone financial crisis, Brexit, and the refugee and migration crisis, all of which have proved challenging to the EU’s ability to solve problems and cooperate.

Our points of departure come from past research on crisis management in the EU context. In this chapter we briefly describe the scholarly debate and explain how our study contributes to current research in the field and specify the concrete research questions our study will address. Our main starting point is that traditional crisis management studies have not sufficiently addressed what is known as “software factors”, such as the central role of public-administration culture and social trust for achieving civil-protection cooperation. Inspired by other researchers in this field (Boin et al. 2013; Bossong and Hegemann 2015), we therefore suggest that the way forward is to combine knowledge from crisis management studies (Ansell et al. 2010; Comfort et al. 2010) with insights from public administration (Christensen et al. 2016a, b; Painter and Peters 2010; Peters 2010; Persson et al. 2017) and social capital studies (Putnam 1993, 2000; Rothstein 2011; Rothstein and Uslaner 2005). By bringing together insights from all three fields we find the conceptual tools that inform our empirical study.

Specifically this book addresses the three following research objectives. First, we investigate the main divides and unifying patterns of cooperation that exist among the countries in our study and report which countries are the most trusted and by whom. Second, we investigate which factors promote effectiveness in civil protection and crisis management both at the national and EU-level. In doing so we examine whether structural and cultural factors are strongly related to perceptions of effectiveness of crisis management within national agencies and to what extent these factors are associated with perceptions of effective crisis management at the EU level. Finally, we investigate the factors that foster trust in national and EU civil protection governance. We examine how trust in EU institutions is linked to trust in national institutions and explore the mechanisms behind confidence in EU governance among civil protection officials.

By studying crucial aspects of civil protection and crisis management in the EU, we should be able to provide insights on proposals and policies to improve responsiveness and to help ensure that crises are met with appropriate measures. We move beyond case studies and a technical analysis of formal institutional structures here, in an effort to uncover the values, principles, norms, and cultures that characterize civil-protection and crisis-management institutions in the Union. The broader question we ask is what traits of administrative agencies—traits that mostly remain hidden beneath the official descriptions of such bodies—serve to facilitate or to hinder cooperation when well-functioning crisis-management and civil-protection institutions are needed the most.

If we understand why and why not cooperation occurs, and what the informal structures are that govern civil-protection and crisis-management institutions, then there is a better chance that our decisions about future strategies will actually guide the EU in directions that sustain and promote its legitimacy.

It is often said that, due to the many crises it faces today, the EU finds itself at an important crossroads. Crises are repeatedly putting the Union in a situation where ‘the response’ or ‘the next move’ is seen as ‘crucial’. But many times, when there is a crisis of some kind, it is not so clear which road should be taken to improve or solve the...