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5 - The politics of tsunami responses: comparing patterns of blame management in Scandinavia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2010

By
Annika Brändström ,
Sanneke Kuipers  and
Pär Daléus
Edited by
Arjen Boin ,
Allan McConnell  and
Paul 't Hart
Annika Brändström
Affiliation:
Swedish Government, Office for Administrative Affairs and Department of Public Administration, Utrecht University
Sanneke Kuipers
Affiliation:
Department of Public Administration, Leiden University
Pär Daléus
Affiliation:
CRISMART, University of Stockholm
Arjen Boin
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University
Allan McConnell
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
Paul 't Hart
Affiliation:
Australian National University, Canberra
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Summary

Introduction

On Boxing day 2004, an earthquake in the Bay of Bengal triggered tsunamis that flooded the coasts of India, Indonesia, Burma, Sri Lanka and Thailand, killing hundreds of thousands and leaving millions homeless and destitute. The involvement of citizens from other continents gave this crisis a truly global dimension. Governments in Europe and Australia slowly but surely realised that this catastrophe far from home required a response beyond simply expressing sympathy, collecting money and sending relief.

Thailand has long been a popular tourist resort for Scandinavians, especially during Christmas. Approximately 30 000 Swedes and thousands of Norwegians and Finns were on holiday in the disaster area in the last weeks of December. Soon after the waves hit the beaches, it became clear that many Scandinavian tourists were missing, making this the worst peacetime disaster ever in all three countries. Even so, it took the three governments more than 24 hours to react to the crisis and several days to initiate rescue attempts, triggering media and political criticism at home. Interestingly, despite the similarities in context and government responses to crisis, the tsunami disaster triggered markedly different political processes in the three most affected Scandinavian countries.

Some political leaders in Sweden, Finland and Norway found themselves to be the targets of intensely critical media scrutiny and political criticism left, right and centre, whereas others managed to escape this media onslaught. Why?

Type
Chapter
Information
Governing after Crisis
The Politics of Investigation, Accountability and Learning
 , pp. 114 - 147
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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