LIST OF PANELS

Legitimate crisis governance in multi-level settings

When a crisis hits, governments need to rapidly enact responses that are effective and legitimate. Yet, the legitimacy of these policies is not easy to acquire, as the measures often entail restrictions on the personal freedoms and liberties of citizens. Legitimacy is a crucial asset for governments to possess during crises (Boin, ‘t Hart and McConnell 2021), but it is one that is increasingly difficult to retain as a crisis progresses.

The challenges of legitimate crises responses are only compounded when governments have to deal with transboundary crises that have differential impact throughout their territory. A transboundary crisis (Blondin & Boin, 2020; Boin, 2019; Wolbers et al., 2021) is not restricted to one single and clearly defined geographical location, but transcends jurisdictional boundaries and impacts different towns, regions, and communities in diverging ways (Ansell et al., 2010).

A transboundary crisis with territorially-differentiated impact, such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic, presents governments with difficult trade-offs between security and liberty, but also between tailored policy responses and equality. Such crises also raise important questions as to the proper level of government that should lead the response. Countries around the world differ markedly in the territorial organization of power, and the multi-level governance arrangements can have significant consequences for how states deal with crises, and how their citizens perceive the legitimacy of different measures enacted by different levels of government. Most complex crises involve interactions between local, regional, national, supranational and global levels of governance. But we know relatively little about the effects of multi-level governance arrangements and the interactions between governance levels on crisis management and the legitimacy of crises policies in particular.

The purpose of this panel is to collect contributions to the study of crisis management with a focus on legitimacy, as an outcome of interest, and multi-level governance, broadly construed as the arrangements related to the territorial and functional distribution of power in states (Marks et al. 2008), as a set of potential explanatory factors. The panel will increase our understanding of the factors that can produce effective and legitimate crises responses. It will shed light on how institutions shape crises responses, what citizens expect from different governments in crisis situations, and what measures can ensure compliance and acceptance. In this way, the panel will advance the academic literatures on crises management, on multi-level governance and on legitimacy (Schoon 2022, Brummel & de Blok, 2024, De Fine Licht et al., 2022). In addition, it has the potential to deliver actionable insights that can improve the practice of crisis management.

Legitimate crisis governance in multi-level settings

When a crisis hits, governments need to rapidly enact responses that are effective and legitimate. Yet, the legitimacy of these policies is not easy to acquire, as the measures often entail restrictions on the personal freedoms and liberties of citizens. This is even more the case for transboundary crises with territorially-differentiated impact, such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic, which present governments with difficult trade-offs between security and liberty, but also between tailored policy responses and equality.

The way governments deal with these trade-offs, and transboundary crises more generally, is shaped by the way power is distributed territorially and functionally within states. These multi-level governance arrangements differ markedly between countries around the world. Moreover, complex crises involve interactions between local, regional, national, supranational and global levels of governance. 

The purpose of this panel is to collect contributions to the study of crisis management with a focus on legitimacy, as an outcome of interest, and multi-level governance, broadly construed as the arrangements related to the territorial and functional distribution of power in states, as a set of potential explanatory factors.

We invite conceptual, theoretical and empirical papers that study the legitimacy of crises responses in general and in the context of specific crises, such as pandemics, natural disasters, and others. We are interested in comparative analyses, as well as in in-depth case studies of particular cities, provinces, countries or regions. We are open to various methodologies, from survey experiments of legitimacy perceptions to institutional analysis to process-tracing case studies of particular government policies. Contributions should reflect on how multi-level arrangements, such as federalism, decentralization, coordination mechanisms, etc. affect (or not) the way government deal with crises and what impact this has (or not) on legitimacy.