Towards Place-Sensitive Crisis Management? Pandemic Policies in Five Nordic Countries

Abstract

The policy issue in focus in this chapter is the local implementation of covid management policies during the pandemic 2020–2022 in the five Nordic countries. More specifically, we seek to determine the extent to which national policies were shaped and implemented in ways that took account of variations in local contexts, such as, for example, varying levels of contagion, different demographic structures, economic needs, access to medical treatment, et cetera. The analysis is based on data on how 411 mayors experienced the Covid policies of the Nordic countries and thus presents a bottom-up perspective on IGR in times of uncertainty and turbulence. The main hypothesis is that the mayors’ experiences of IGR significantly depend upon their access to national levels of decision-making. The hypothesis was largely confirmed, but the analysis also demonstrated that a series of other factors influenced IGRs as experienced by mayors, such as political affiliation or centre–periphery contrasts, while formal institutional variations did not matter as much as expected.

Introduction

The policy issue in focus in this chapter is the local implementation of covid management policies during the pandemic 2020–2022 in the five Nordic countries. More specifically, we seek to determine the extent to which national policies were shaped and implemented in ways that took account of variations in local contexts, such as varying levels of contagion, different demographic structures, economic needs, and access to medical treatment. This was a difficult issue to resolve for decision-makers, imbued with dilemmas, tensions, conflicts, and dissent.

The analysis of the issue is based on data on how mayors experienced the covid policies of the Nordic countries and thus presents a bottom-up perspective on IGR in times of uncertainty and turbulence. Mayors could be heard to argue, for example, that national policies were too harsh for their own municipalities with few or no covid cases, or that covid measures that interfered with important companies in their municipality should not be applied in their case. In other words, mayors would normally prefer covid policies to be place sensitive, that is, taking account of or being adapted to varying local contexts.

A similar attitude was echoed in a statement from the national committee appointed to assess Norway’s handling of the covid crisis,

not all the national infection control measures were equally adapted to local circumstances since the infection situation in the municipalities sometimes differed … It is the committee’s assessment that more geographical differentiation of measures can in many cases be more effective and contribute to reduce the total burden of measures. (NOU, 2023:16, p. 235)

Developing place-sensitive policies would also be consistent with the legal norm of proportionality, which states that restrictive policy measures shall not go beyond what is required by the immediate situation at hand (Meßerschmidt, 2020; Bassan, 2021). And, of course, “the immediate situation at hand” would often vary from one community to another, and especially so in the territorially diverse Nordic countries, thus requiring covid policies to be place sensitive. However, evidence from other countries indicates that uncertainty over the territorial spread of contagion, the (perceived) need for speedy action, and sometimes lack of preparedness often led to centralised decision-making and the adoption of measures that were applied uniformly across the national territories (Kuhlmann & Franzke, 2022; Kuhlmann et al., 2021; Jugl, 2022; Yan et al., 2021).

Nordic mayors are responsible for altogether 1117 municipalities. They cover a fairly similar range of tasks, the most exposed of which to covid contagion were pre- and primary schools, elderly care, social services, medical services, public health, and public transport. All of these services were severely disrupted by the pandemic and many operations had to be temporarily reorganised to provide a minimal service or to protect employees. Traditional local services, such as garbage collection, street maintenance, or planning, struggled to keep going under pressure of high levels of sickness absence due to covid. It fell to local leaders to cope with these problems and disruptions under national regulations that could sometimes be hard to explain to the local citizenry. Conflicts over the local application of national regulations erupted as well as over the distribution of covid vaccines between regions or urban and rural areas (Fosse et al., 2022). In Norway, for example, the political leader of the City of Oslo became a vocal defender of local autonomy in crisis management as well as a critic of vaccine distribution which he claimed unduly favoured peripheral regions (Johansen, 2022: 65; Høie, 2022: 96).

The data on how the mayors coped with national policies at the local level stem from surveys carried out in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden in the early summer of 2022, that is, after more than two years of pandemic experiences. The responses from the mayors allow us to address six sets of questions including the questions posed in the Introduction to this book:

• 1. How place sensitive were the policies adopted in each country as perceived by mayors?

• 2. To what extent did the covid policies represent a mobilisation of bias in favour of particular groups of actors and their policy framing? As policies aiming at preventing or mitigating the spread of contagion, covid measures could be expected to represent a certain bias in favour of medical/public health expertise. However, did the mayors see the policies as they applied to their own community to be defined in medical terms to the exclusion of other important societal considerations?

• 3. To what extent did the IGR systems in the five countries during the pandemic exhibit features of centralism and/or conflicted relations? (Looking for the pattern of multi-layered relations is not so relevant for the Nordic countries that are all unitary states with no chambers or formal representation for local or regional authorities at the national level of government.) Central-local relations in the Nordic countries have been characterised by the terms “cooperative decentralisation” (Baldersheim et al., 2017), that is, as fairly harmonious partnerships with high levels of local autonomy (Ladner et al., 2019). Against the background of this historical-institutional tradition, high levels of decentralisation and low levels of conflict could be expected to characterise IGRs during the implementation of covid policies. Was this actually the case, or did centralism and conflict become the (dis)order of the day under the stress of the pandemic?

• 4. Is the level of conflict in IGRs a function of national elites’ (lack of) receptivity to local knowledge, as proposed in the Introduction? (“an IGR system may be decentralised but without vertical IGR pathways through which tensions can be resolved and subnational governments with the mandate to negotiate with and the capacity to mobilise against the centre, the IGR policy process will become conflicted rather than multi-layered contributing to a confused and weak IGR relationship”, p. 2). If so, the more or better access of local elites to national decision-makers, the less conflict and the more place sensitivity of covid policies could be expected.

• 5. Were other cleavages of the Nordic political systems activated during the pandemic? For example, cleavages between central and peripheral regions, political parties, or class-related distributional conflicts?

• 6. The five countries are often seen as five varieties of a common political-economic “Nordic model”. Too what extent was a shared IGR “Nordic model” in evidence during the pandemic?

The Nordic Setting, And What to Expect

Textbook presentations of the Nordic countries usually emphasise shared traditions in terms of political culture, welfare, and administration (Esping-Andersen, 1990; Knutsen, 2017a). The five countries regularly lead international comparisons of democracy, transparency, public health, and even individual happiness (Haug, 2023). They also lead in terms of local government autonomy (Ladner et al., 2019). Given this background, it would be reasonable to expect a pattern of shared features of covid management regimes across the Nordic countries, and also effective implementation of covid policy responses.

In fact, the covid regimes differed substantially. At the outbreak of the pandemic, covid management powers and competences were divided quite differently between the levels of government across the five countries. Finland and Norway could be termed decentralised countries with independent and discretionary powers of intervention allocated to municipalities, including powers to regulate assemblies, or close down public institutions and private businesses if deemed necessary for medical reasons. In Denmark and Sweden, similar powers were granted to regional boards of health appointed by elected regional councils. In contrast, Iceland operated a centralised system of health protection under which policy decisions were made by the central government (in practice, the national health directorate). At the outbreak of the pandemic Denmark switched to a centralised mode of covid management, suspending the powers of the regional health boards, and making the prime minister’s office into the decision-making hub. The Swedish situation is harder to classify: the covid regime could be described as regionalised, but since the state at the outset chose a largely non-interventionist policy, the system was only mobilised at a much later stage than in the other four countries (see also national corona commissions: NOU, 2021: 6; NOU, 2023: 16; SOU, 2021:89; SOU, 2022:10; Folketinget, 2021).

The covid regimes in actual operation developed dynamic features beyond the institutionalised division of responsibilities between central and local government. The seemingly centralised Danish system, for example, was supplemented by a body of coordination organised by the Danish National Association of Local and Regional Authorities that helped municipalities interpreting national regulations and also contributed to the formulation of regulations. Similarly, Sweden’s national association of municipalities and regions (SKR) played a crucial role as coordinator between national and local authorities and between municipalities in specific regions (SOU, 2021: 89, p. 44). In Norway and Finland, coordination between national and local authorities relied to a larger extent on formal lines of communication through the regional state district authorities.

The covid regimes demonstrated a certain mobilisation of bias (Schattschneider, 1960) privileging medical expertise. Legislation gave national medical authorities privileged access to decision-making as advisers to ministers. At the local level in Finland and Norway municipalities, too, were required to employ a medical officer with expertise in contagious deceases and with powers to initiate measures to prevent the spread of contagion (any decisions that involved limitations on individual rights of citizens would have to be confirmed by the elected municipal council). Some critics found the privileging of medical concerns to be too extensive and the consequent interventions too one-sided at the cost of wider societal interests (Graver & Øverenget, 2022). Was that the experience of the mayors, too?

Analysis and Findings

This section presents analyses and findings arising from the six questions posed earlier. As mentioned above, the data are based on a survey of Nordic mayors, of whom 411 out of 1117 responded to the survey. The sample is statistically representative of Nordic mayors overall (see appendix for details). The findings are based on the mayors’ responses to questions relating to their experiences of managing their local covid situations over the preceding two years or so. The mayors were asked to indicate how well their experiences corresponded with a series of statements about interactions with state agencies. The statements were derived from test interviews with mayors, case studies, and documentary evidence from commissions of inquiry.

Mobilisation of Bias?

How much bias in favour of medical expertise was experienced by mayors during the implementation of covid policies? The issue was addressed by the following statement submitted to mayors: “National regulations have been overly reliant on medical advice and have had too little regard of other socio-economic consequences of pandemic measures” (the statement was presented with an introductory text that included a battery of items specifically to the situation in the respondents’ municipalities). Agreement with the statement indicates that the mayor found that public health concerns had been too influential as regards the situation in his/her own municipality.

Thirty-three per cent of mayors agreed fully or partly to this statement. In other words, one third of mayors found the medical bias to be too strong with regard to the situation in their respective municipalities.

Centralism?

To what extent did the IGRs that developed during the pandemic exhibit features of centralism? To measure the degree of centralism of decision-making, mayors were asked to take a stand on the following statement: “We felt that all too often, national regulations were imposed upon us without considerations of local variations regarding risks of contagion”. Thirty-seven per cent of mayors agreed fully or partly with this statement. In other words, around one third of mayors found IGRs to be centralised in the sense that decisions were taken unilaterally and without regard of local conditions.

Conflicted IGRs: Bias and Centralism by Country

The issues of overly medicalised bias and non-adaptive decision-making (centralism) can be seen as dimensions of conflict in central-local relations. How did dimensions of conflict vary across countries? The graphs in Fig. 3.1 present mean values of mayors’ responses by country.

Fig. 3.1

Bias and centralism by country. Mean values—scale 0–100. (“Regulations were too medically biased”; “Regulations were too standardised”)

Denmark and Finland stand out as contrasts on both dimensions. Finnish mayors saw their national covid regimes as substantially more biased than Danish mayors did, and similarly for regulatory decisions, which the Finns also more often than the Danes found to have been too standardised and unilaterally imposed upon them. A Finnish mayor wrote in his/her explanatory remarks to the survey that “a primary challenge in local covid management has been restrictions imposed by the national government in situations without any cases of covid contagion in the municipality”. Another Finnish mayor wrote that “local crisis management was complicated by contradictory regulations issued by state agencies”. Even in Denmark, some mayors remarked that they found national regulations unnecessarily restrictive, especially concerning schools and care for the elderly in the later stages of the pandemic.

Sweden is quite close to the Finnish pattern while Iceland is closer to Denmark, with Norway somewhere in-between. Furthermore, recalling that Norway and Finland ran the most decentralised covid regimes (with regulatory powers allocated to municipalities), a contrast between the two decentralised countries and the other three countries could have been expected. There are, however, no clear traces of such a division in the graphs of Fig. 3.1 where we examine aggregated patterns at the national levels.

Nevertheless, the patterns in Fig. 3.1 do demonstrate that IGRs in the Nordic countries, as experienced by substantial proportions of mayors, could be biased, centralised, and conflicted. In other words, the pandemic drove IGRs in directions not normally associated with the Nordic model. The figure also shows that the patterns did not follow clear-cut national lines—mayoral experiences vary substantially also inside each country. In the next section we shall investigate more closely the reasons for variations at the level of individual mayors.

Access: An Explanatory Variable?

Was the level of conflict in IGRs a function of local access to national elites, as suggested in the introductory chapter? The hypothesis is that the better the access, the less conflict there is in IGRs. The access of local government representatives to national decision-makers may not necessarily follow the formal lines of authority and division of competences. Here, access is modelled in behavioural terms as the sum of mayors’ experiences in their interactions with national authorities. Mayors were asked to describe their experiences in terms of quality of communication with national agencies, the receptivity of national authorities to local knowledge, and the usefulness of national advice as seen by the mayors.

The modelling of access draws on theories of collaborative governance (Ansell & Gash, 2008; Emerson et al., 2012) that emphasise the importance of the time dimension of interactions for establishing trustful and productive relations. Since the covid crisis arrived in waves over a long period and required repeated contacts many opportunities for mutual learning occurred, so that a potential for collaborative governance existed.

The extent to which this potential was actually realised was mapped through the mayors’ responses to the following statements:

• (a) Guidelines and recommendations from national authorities were very helpful during the first weeks of the pandemic (61% overall say statement fits “very well” or “extremely well”)

• (b) On the whole, our communication with national authorities has been conducted smoothly and efficiently (55% ditto)

• (c) National authorities have been highly receptive to our local experiences (68% ditto).

As the figures above indicate, the majority of mayors found that access to national authorities worked fairly well, although it should also be noted that substantial proportions did not think that access was particularly satisfactory.

Items a, b, and c were combined into an additive index of access. The results are displayed by country in Fig. 3.2. The figure also includes the combined scores for IGR conflicts (the sum of the two conflict dimensions presented in Fig. 3.1). The highest access scores are obtained by Iceland and Denmark and the lowest scores by Sweden and Finland, with Norway in between. All five countries score above the midpoint mark on a scale of 0–100 but even the Danes score no more than two thirds of the full mark. Overall, the majority of mayors seemed fairly satisfied with their access to the national decision-makers but there were also quite a few who found access to be deficient, and more so in the East Scandinavian countries of Finland and Sweden than in the three West Scandinavian countries.

Fig. 3.2

Levels of access (sum of a, b, c above) and conflict (cf. Fig. 3.1)

The inserted curve for conflicted IGRs seems to suggest a certain relationship between access and conflict. Denmark and Iceland are characterised by high levels of access and moderate to low levels of conflict. However, in the other three countries moderate to high levels of access are accompanied by fairly high levels of conflict, at least compared to Denmark and Iceland.

In terms of institutional set-up of covid regimes, Norway and, to some extent, Finland were classified as decentralised regimes since they had allocated powers of adopting legally binding regulations to municipalities. Iceland and, after an institutional turn-around, Denmark operated highly centralised systems while Sweden relied on soft laws promulgated by the central government and to be implemented or modified at the discretion of the regional boards of health management. In other words, in the three latter countries municipalities were formally mere agents of implementation of regulations issued by authorities at higher levels—the state or regional boards. However, from Figs. 3.1 and 3.2 it is hard to see that formal institutional set-ups can account for the patterns of conflict observed at the aggregate national levels. There was not less conflict in Norway or Finland than in Iceland or Denmark.

To arrive at a broader understanding of the interplay of factors that could potentially drive patterns of conflict, regression analysis was carried out with institutional, ideological, territorial, and economic factors added to access as independent variables. The analysis is presented in the next section (note Iceland was excluded from the regression analysis because of too few cases).

Patterns and Drivers of IGR Conflicts

The purpose of this section is to ascertain how important access is as an explanatory factor compared to the potential impact of other factors such as institutional, ideological, or territorial contrasts across countries or municipalities. As suggested by Niall Ferguson (2021: 8),

A disaster such as a pandemic is not a single, discrete event. It invariably leads to other forms of disaster—economic, social, and political.

The overarching argument of this chapter is that the pandemic did not hit communities to the same extent or in the same way across the national territories of the Nordic countries. The “face” of the pandemic varied from place to place. Therefore, the responses of the mayors to national policies may vary accordingly.

In pandemic terms, the most obvious variation across communities and regions was the variations as to the spread of the contagion—some communities were harder hit than others. The level of pandemic impact may naturally have coloured the responses of local leaders. Behnke and Person (2022) found in a study of German Länder that the more extensive the contagion, the more readily decision-makers accepted harsh covid policies. Was that so also among Nordic mayors? An economic indicator is used as an operationalisation of early covid shock: the proportion of workers furloughed during the first half of 2020 because of covid restrictions.

The Nordic countries are territorially extensive and diverse, possibly with the exception of Denmark, (our surveys did not cover the Faroe Islands and Greenland). It would not be surprising if territorial dimensions of diversity and conflict were brought into play under conditions of uncertainty such as the pandemic. Two potential drivers of territorial conflict have been explored: centre-periphery cleavages and variations of municipal size.

Differences between central and peripheral regions, in terms of distinct voting patterns, are permanent features of national politics in several of the Nordic countries (Knutsen, 2017b: 80; Stein et al., 2019), driven by differences in value preferences as well as in socio-economic lifestyles and interests. Did such tensions flare up during the pandemic? Compared to central regions, peripheries are characteristically “distant, different, and dependent” (Rokkan & Urwin, 1983). The more distant from the capital a region is located, the more different it is in cultural terms or lifestyles, or the more dependent it is in terms of economic or administrative resources, the more it has the features of a periphery.

In our analysis, these features were operationalised in the following way: distant—geographic distance of municipality from the national capital; different—degree of rurality; dependent—degree of economic modernisation (see appendix for details).

Variations according to municipal size are a further territorial dimension of the covid regimes. Here, size is seen as a proxy for resources or capacities needed to cope with the pandemic, administratively and in terms of know-how. With fewer resources of their own and thus with less capacity for developing their own crisis management strategies, small municipalities may be satisfied with instructions from above and happy to implement national regulations without any local adaptations. In contrast, larger municipalities with more diverse needs and capacities to develop their own policies may be unhappy with national standardisation and thus more likely to enter into conflict with national agencies.

As mentioned above, the appropriateness of intrusive covid regulations has been questioned on normative grounds. How acceptable from the point of views of constitutional and/or human rights are regulations that suspend normal civil liberties? Behnke and Person have suggested that such interventions may seem less acceptable to political parties on the right that have traditionally been champions of individual liberties and often sceptical to state interventions. Behnke and Person (2022) found in their study of German Länder mentioned above that this was indeed the case: Länder with a left-wing majority accepted intrusive covid regulations more readily than those with right-wing majorities. Similarly, left-wing mayors may be more ready to accept standardised national covid measures than right-wing mayors.

Findings: Drivers of Conflict

The results of the regression analysis (see appendix for details) demonstrate the role of access as a driver of conflicted IGR. After simultaneously taking the above-mentioned factors into account, the most important factor of all was the quality of access, that is, the collaborative quality of central-local interaction. The more interaction corresponded to the collaborative model, the more mayors tended to see regulations as reasonably acceptable judged from the situation in their respective local communities. Presumably, central-local relations along the lines of collaborative governance opened opportunities for mayors to present local views and experiences and thus bring about adjustments to national policies in ways that corresponded to local circumstances as seen by local leaders.

Nevertheless, a number of other conflict drivers also appeared.

The initial pandemic shock mattered for levels of conflict. Serious economic consequences of the pandemic in the early stage (furloughed workers) tended to raise conflict levels. In other words, the more furloughs there were in the initial stage of the pandemic, the less mayors thought regulations had suited local circumstances. This may seem contrary to the findings of Behnke and Person, who concluded that serious covid impact led to greater readiness among decision-makers in the Lãnder to accept severe covid measures. The reason for these contrasting findings may be that the focus of the two studies differs somewhat: In the German study the focus is on decision-makers’ readiness to adopt severe regional policies, whereas our study focuses on mayors’ readiness to accept standardised national policies. Nevertheless, the common denominator is that the territorial variation of the pandemic impact mattered for adoption or acceptance of covid policies.

Furthermore, the role of party affiliation reflects underlying political tensions over covid regulations since territorial standardisation of regulations seems to have been more acceptable to left-wing mayors than to those on the right (right-wing mayors were more dissatisfied than left-wingers were). This pattern is compatible with the finding from the German study quoted above: that parties on the right were more concerned with individual liberty than those on the right and, therefore, also more critical of the actual regulatory outcomes. This could also extend to a greater concern for local liberties among right-wing mayors.

There was also a centre-periphery dimension to the patterns of conflict. Mayors in peripheral regions (i.e. those located most distant from the capitals of the respective countries) were more dissatisfied with covid regulations than mayors from central regions were. The other two dimensions of peripherality—rurality and (low) level of economic modernity—were of little consequence as far as pandemic conflicts were concerned. Variations in municipal size also turned out to be insignificant for levels of conflict.

In the regression analysis institutional features of IGR were also taken into account. As mentioned above, unlike the situation in Denmark and Sweden, municipalities in Finland and Norway were legally empowered to adopt their own local pandemic regulations, but this contrast did not lead to systematically lower levels of conflict in the latter two cases combined.

The analysis included, furthermore, biographic data as control variables—gender and mayoral experience. Only gender was statistically related to levels of conflict. It seems that female mayors were more critical of national covid regulations than male mayors were. Why this should be so must remain an open question for the moment. The reason why the impact of mayoral experience was statistically insignificant may be that almost all mayors were long-serving veterans of local politics and already knew the corridors of power even when they might be newcomers to the office of mayor.

The model explained 21% of total variation, and a substantial part of the model’s explanatory power can be attributed to the quality of access or the incidence of collaborative governance. In other words, a fundamental feature of the Nordic pattern of IGR (cooperative decentralisation) was apparent also during the period of stressful pandemic policy implementation.

Discussion and Conclusions

Six questions were outlined in the introduction to the chapter: (1) Did the Nordic countries respond to the pandemic with policies that were sufficiently place sensitive in the eyes of the mayors? (2) Were the IGRs during the pandemic biased in ways that reduced or enhanced the place sensitivity of policies? (3) Was decision-making highly centralised, or was there room for local adaptation of policies? (4) How conflicted were IGRs? (5) Did the degree of access by local decision-makers to national policy-making matter for the levels of conflict? (6) Did different IGRs activate further socio-political cleavages?

The questions have been addressed with data from surveys of mayors in the five countries. The data provide a bottom-up view of IGRs as experienced by mayors. Our approach therefore goes beyond analysis of institutional structures to focus primarily on behavioural data.

• 1. The answer to the first question is that IGR in the Nordic countries during the pandemic resulted in central government policy responses that were largely to the satisfaction of mayors—in that mayors considered policy responses to be reasonably place sensitive given the problem pressures in their communities. Nevertheless, there were variations between countries and across municipalities within countries. Mayors in Sweden and Finland were markedly less satisfied than their colleagues in the other three countries.

• 2. Policy responses were biased in the sense that policies were heavily shaped by medical and public health concerns. This was not surprising given the nature of the problem and that the legislative arrangements for dealing with contagious diseases gave privileged decision-making access to medical expertise. Thus, a substantial proportion of mayors felt that medical concerns were assigned too much weight to the detriment of other socio-economic concerns in their communities.

• 3. Decision-making was, furthermore, not as uniformly decentralised as might be expected given the Nordic model of local governance. Formally, the covid regimes of Finland and Norway allowed greater local influence and adaptation than was the case for municipalities in the three other countries.

• 4. Although conflict was not pervasive, IGRs were conflicted to some extent. Many mayors felt that decision-making was too top-down with little concern for local circumstances, a feature they again attributed to the privileged position of medical expertise. Mayoral dissatisfaction with the place sensitivity of national covid policies was also notable even under the formally decentralised covid regimes of Finland and Norway.

• 5. The occurrence of conflicted IGRs could largely be explained by the degree of access which local decision-makers had to national authorities. For analytical purposes access was modelled by drawing on theories of collaborative governance. The theories portray access as a function of iterative interactions, providing opportunities for mutual learning and trust-building. The long duration of the pandemic—more than two years—and the numerous policy revisions provided many opportunities for conflict but also for learning and trust-building. The latter processes seem to have dominated IGRs, and to the extent they did, mayors reported greater satisfaction.

• 6. In addition to impacts of covid shock, IGRs during the pandemic also reflected a series of standing cleavages of the Nordic polities such as ideological orientations and centre-periphery divisions. Economic covid shock early on shaped many mayors’ attitudes to national regulations—the greater the shock, the less satisfied they were with standardised policies. A conflict of values was also activated, manifested as differences between left- and right-wing mayors. The former seemed more willing to accept curtailment of local liberties in favour of national standardisation than the latter. There were also traces of a centre-periphery cleavage in the sense that mayors from distant regions were more critical of national policies than those from more central regions.

Could a uniform, common Nordic model be detected in the mayors’ responses and the subsequent IGRs? The answer is largely “yes” despite cross-country variations. National lead policies were different, and policy implementation regimes were different. At the national level, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, and Norway swiftly, and at times in panic, adopted severe emergency policies while Sweden chose a wait-and-see stance. Over time, however, Swedish policies moved closer to those of the other Nordics. Implementation regimes also varied, with centralised regimes in Denmark and Iceland, more decentral modes in Finland and Norway, and a somewhat detached stance in Sweden.

Some cracks appeared in the Nordic model of IGRs—that of cooperative decentralisation. The cracks mostly followed predictable cleavages: those of economic interests (“keep the wheels rolling”), conflicts of values (right- versus left-wing political parties or pluralism versus standardisation), and conflicts of centres and peripheries.

However, the corona pandemic was “a disaster in slow motion” (Ferguson, 2021); the time that elapsed from the declaration of national emergencies in March 2020 to the middle of 2022 when things began to approach “normal” gave local and national crisis management opportunities for learning and adaptation; and, of course, the arrival of effective vaccines in early 2021 changed the game considerably—from imposing and patrolling limitation on social interaction to devising rules for distribution of scarce vaccines—and to convincing the sceptical to take the vaccines. Overall, cooperative decentralisation re-emerged as the order of the day—and, having survived the pandemic stress, will probably remain the order of the future.

Appendix: Regression Analysis and Data Sources

Table 3.1 Local implementation of covid policies and conflict in central-local relations. Regression analysis (OLS). Dependent variable: Level of conflict in IGRs. Details on data and sources in Table 3.2

Table 3.2 Data and sources of variables used in the regression analysis

About the Surveys

The development of the questionnaire was carried out in autumn and winter 2021/2022 through a series of literature reviews, interviews with mayors and CEOs, and testing within the framework of the Nordic research project POLYGOV (Crisis management in a polycentric Nordic local democracy: different governance structures—different results?), financed by the Norwegian Research Council, project number 326136. (See the project’s website: https://www.polygov.org/).

Table 3.3 Response rates