Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-669899f699-swprf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-24T17:22:36.811Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

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
Get access

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Anheier, H. (ed.) 1999. When things go wrong. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Bloom, H., and Price, H. D. 1975. Voter response to short-run economic conditions: the asymmetric effect of prosperity and recession. American Political Science Review 69(4):1240–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boin, A., 't Hart, P., Stern, E. K. and Sundelius, B. 2005. The politics of crisis management: public leadership under pressure. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bovens, M. and 't Hart, P. 1996. Understanding policy fiascoes. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.Google Scholar
Bovens, M., 't Hart, P. and Peters, B. G. 1999. Success and failure in public governance. Aldershot, UK: Edward Elgar.Google Scholar
Bostdorff, D. M. 1994. The presidency and the rhetoric of foreign crisis. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Brändström, A., and Kuipers, S. 2003. From normal incidents to political crises: understanding the selective politicization of policy failures. Government and Opposition 38(3):279–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buzan, B., Waever, O. and Wilde, J. 1998. Security: a new framework for analysis. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.Google Scholar
D'Angelo, P. 2002. News framing as a multi-paradigmatic research program: a response to Entman. Journal of Communication 52(4):870–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeVreese, C. H. 2003. Framing Europe: television news and European integration. Amsterdam: Aksant Academic Publishers.
Douglas, M. 1992. Risk and blame. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edelman, M. 1964. The symbolic uses of politics. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Edelman, M. 1977. Political language: words that succeed and policies that fail. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Edelman, M. 1988. Constructing the political spectacle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Edelman, M. 1995. From art to politics: how artistic creations shape political conceptions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ellis, R. 1994. Presidential lightning rods – the politics of blame avoidance. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Eriksson, J. 2004. Kampen om hotbilde: Rutin och drama i svensk säkerhetspolitik. Stockholm: Santérus Förlag.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. 1975. Frame analysis: an essay on the organization of experience. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
't Hart, P. 1993. Symbols, rituals and power: the lost dimension of crisis management. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 1(1):36–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hood, C. 2002. The risk game and the blame game. Government and Opposition 37(1):15–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hurst, S. 2004. The rhetorical strategy of George H. W. Bush during the Persian Gulf crisis 1990–91: how to help lose a war you won. Political Studies 52(2):376–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iyengar, S. 1996. Framing responsibility for political issues. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 546(12):59–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, D. 2000. Sultans of spin: the media and the new labour government. London: Orion Books.Google Scholar
Kernell, S. 1977. Presidential popularity and negative voting: an alternative explanation of the midterm congressional decline of the president's party. American Political Science Review 71(1):44–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingdon, J. 1995. Agendas, alternatives and public policies, 2nd edn. New York: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Kofman-Bos, C., Ullberg, S. and 't Hart, P. 2005. The long shadow of disaster: memory and politics in Holland and Sweden. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 23(1):5–26.Google Scholar
Lau, R. 1985. Two explanations for negativity effects in political behavior. American Journal of Political Science 29(1):119–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGraw, K. M. 1991. Managing blame: an experimental test of the effects of political accounts. American Political Science Review 85(4):1133–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelkin, D. 1975. The political impact of technical expertise. Social Studies of Science 5:35–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ögren, M. 2005. Makten framför allt. Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand.Google Scholar
Rochefort, D., and Cobb, R. 1994. The politics of problem definition: shaping the policy agenda. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Schön, D. A., and Rein, M. 1994. Frame reflection: toward the resolution of intractable policy controversies. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Thompson, D. F. 1980. Moral responsibility of public officials: the problem of many hands. American Political Science Review 74(3):905–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vaughan, D. 1999. The dark side of organizations: mistake, misconduct, and disaster. Annual Review of Sociology 25:271–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×