Centre for Societal Security

This article offers a conceptual framework that broadens and enhances our understanding of the role of `history' in contemporary governance and the attempts by policy-makers to `manage' critical issues. Building upon the literature on historical analogies in policymaking, we distinguish 3 dimensions that clarify how the past may emerge in and affect current deliberations, choices and rhetoric of policy-makers. The interpretive value of the scheme will is illustrated by a comparative examination of two cases of crisis management where historical analogies played an important part: the Swedish response to (alleged) submarine intrusions in 1982, and the European sanctions against Austria in 1999. From these exploratory case studies we induce new concepts and hypotheses for understanding the role of historical analogies in public policy-making and crisis management, to be tested in future research.

In virtually every assessment of responses to large-scale crises and disasters, coordination is identified as a critical failure factor. After the crisis, official committees and political opponents often characterize the early phases of the response as a 'failure to coordinate.' Not surprisingly, improved coordination quickly emerges as the prescribed solution. Coordination, then, is apparently both the problem and the solution. But the proposed solutions rarely solve the problem: coordination continues to mar most crises and disasters. In the absence of a shared body of knowledge on coordination, it is hard to formulate a normative framework that allows for systematic assessment of coordination in times of crisis. As coordination is widely perceived as an important function of crisis and disaster management, this absence undermines a fair and balanced assessment of crisis management performance. This paper seeks to address that void. We aim to develop a framework that explains both the failure and success of crisis coordination. We do this by exploring the relevant literature, reformulating what coordination is and distilling from research the factors that cause failure and success.

This article offers a conceptual framework that broadens and enhances our understanding of the role of `history' in contemporary governance and the attempts by policy-makers to `manage' critical issues. Building upon the literature on historical analogies in policymaking, we distinguish 3 dimensions that clarify how the past may emerge in and affect current deliberations, choices and rhetoric of policy-makers. The interpretive value of the scheme will is illustrated by a comparative examination of two cases of crisis management where historical analogies played an important part: the Swedish response to (alleged) submarine intrusions in 1982, and the European sanctions against Austria in 1999. From these exploratory case studies we induce new concepts and hypotheses for understanding the role of historical analogies in public policy-making and crisis management, to be tested in future research.

Leadership succession in democratic governments and political parties is an ubiquitous but relatively understudied phenomen, where the political becomes intensely personal and vice versa. This article outlines the puzzles that leadership succession poses to political analysts, reviews the literature, and offers a conceptual framework deconstructing the process in terms of a flow from succession contexts and triggers via the role choices of key participants (incumbents and aspiring successors) through to the eventual succession outcomes. It concludes by presenting a series of testable hypotheses to describe and explain leadership successions.

3 Summary Given its ubiquity in and preceived importance for the life of political parties, the dynamics of party leadership succession (in established democracies) have received comparatively little attention from political scientists, apart from studying the impact of different institutional mechanisms of leadership selection. This article has breaks new ground in two ways: by examining party leadership successions from the perspective of aspirants/successors. First of all it offers a conceptual framework outlining the major choices aspirants to party leadership face in: a) managing their candidacy so as to overcome the obstacles that confront them in an often long and arduous road to the top; b) after attaining leadership striking a balance between the contending imperatives of retaining the predecessor's support and preserving party unity by projecting continuity versus asserting authority by imposing one's own storyline and highlighting the differences between the outgoing leader and the new regime. Secondly, drawing on findings of a 4 country/8 party dataset study of party leadership successions between 1945 and 2005 it provides some preliminary ideas about the conditions of their success or failure in their new leadership role. 4 1. Into the hot seat 1 In Spring 2006, with Tony Blair fading in political importance at the helm after announcing his decision not to stand for a fourth term in office as Prime Minister, heir apparent and Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown was under continuing pressure to resolve the dilemma of going for the kill of what now seemed a wounded prey versus preserving the legacy of New Labour. Pushing too hard for Blair to turn over the reins would no doubt prod the 'Blairites' to scrimmage and put up resistance, possibly by fielding their own candidate that would deflate the momentum of the New Labour program as Brown would like to characterize it -an unbroken commitment to public spending on popular programs while upholding financial austerity and relatively low taxation. If Brown sought confrontation, the Blairites could repeat what they had done on earlier occasions in this ongoing succession contest: paint a Brown leadership as a return to 'old labour' values which would put in jeopardy the inroad Labour had made into middle-class England. With a resurgent Conservative Party making Labour pundits more nervous about the next election than they had ever been since 1997 when the party regained governmet under Blair, this argument might just stick. Allowing Blair breathing space to stage a dignified exit at a time of his own choosing would consume valuable time that Brown as leader could have spent rebuilding

What makes some European transitional states assume the role as "trusted allies" to the United States in the war against terrorism in general and the Iraq war in particular, in sharp contrast to the Franco-German axis that vehemently opposes recent U.S. policy in the Middle East? Why was not Europe more closely knit as a political entity than to allow the disarray that followed the U.S. and UK initiatives regarding Iraq, which seriously damaged the cohesion of NATO and the EU's Common foreign and security policy? 2 In order to begin answering these questions, this study will investigate the basic principles and policy ideas underlying the foreign policy of two increasingly central, yet surprisingly overlooked, actors in modern European politics -

Bynander, Fredrik 2003: The Rise and Fall of the Submarine Threat: Threat Politics and the Submarine Intrusions in Sweden 1980-2002. Written in English. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Skrifter utgivna av statsvetenskapliga föreningen i Uppsala, 153. 300 p. ISBN 91- 554-5638-3. This dissertation analyzes the submarine problem in Sweden as an object of security politicization. It investigates how politicians and military officers dealt with the submarine incidents of the 1980s and 1990s, and how their actions were portrayed in the media. A popular assumption in modern literature on media and politics is that the media arena helps define the political arena—which players are important, what issues are placed on the political agenda, and which options are available for competitive political elites in democratic systems of government. By quantitatively analyzing the media image of the submarine “threat”, and comparing those results with indicators of public opinion and policy change, th...

This paper presents the result of the work achieved by a European consortium, which has as goal to build an innovative system to assist security managers in the crisis preparation, training and management phases. The iterative approach of the consortium is presented, as well as the results. An novel interactive and shared Common Operational Picture is proposed which has been validated by three large scale demonstrations. Ongoing and future work focusing on the security of building interiors is moreover presented.

Laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) has become a "gold standard" for cholelithiasis treatment and is considered to be a safe method of treatment for acute cholecystitis. Among complications of this procedure, gallbladder and bile duct injuries as well as haemorrhage caused by vascular, hepatic or abdominal wall vessel injuries are most frequent. Rarer complications include duodenum, colon and other visceral perforations or vascular injuries. Four thousand five hundred and ninety-five laparoscopic cholecystectomies were performed in a single department of surgery from 1994 to 2008. Since 2001, ten serious complications have been noted. Herein we present our experience with rare complications after LC: splenic lesion and abdominal aorta rupture. Surgeons should always be aware of even unlikely complications of frequently performed procedures. In the case of intra-abdominal haemorrhage after LC and no apparent bleeding site in the operated region, injury to distal organs should always be considered. Whenever suspicion of intraperitoneal haemorrhage after LC is raised, revision by laparoscopy should be considered, and as shock symptoms develop, urgent laparotomy is required.

Sida and others who have helped us gain insight into their organization and their work after the tsunami, despite their often full agendas. Also, our colleagues at Crismart have assisted us greatly by reading and providing helpful comments on different drafts of this report. * Riktlinjer för Sidas arbete för humanitärt bistånd [Guidelines for Sida's work with humanitarian assistance] (Regeringsbeslut UD2004/60685/GS; bilaga 1) [Cabinet decision…] ⁄ Evaluation and Participation-some lessons.