Adaptive Political-administrative Leadership During the Pandemic: A Comparative Case Analysis

Political-administrative (P-A) leadership in Italy, Norway, and Sweden unfolded very differently during the early response to the coronavirus pandemic, despite all three countries being democracies in Europe. Italy early on became the "epicenter" of the pandemic in Europe and enforced intrusive countermeasures, followed by Norway only a few days later. Sweden, to a larger extent, used voluntary measures during the first months. However, while Norway quickly gained "control" over the pandemic, the death toll in Italy and Sweden escalated to the highest in Europe. In this "extreme case study," we compare leadership trajectories in the three countries during the first phase based on a rich data set consisting of interviews with P-A leaders, official evaluation reports, and media coverage. Particularly, we examine differences in the two adaptive crisis leadership functions, proactive situational awareness and coordination of response, their interplay with critical framing conditions, and how this influenced crisis response in this first critical phase of the pandemic. We found that framing conditions such as capacity and legitimacy influence leadership greatly; however, the execution of critical leadership functions may be important to evaluations of succeeding with responding in the first phase and in the aftermath of such crises.