Political-administrative Leadership and Collective Emotion Trajectories During the Pandemic

The first phase of the Covid-19-pandemic was an extreme event context with tremendous consequences that triggered collective emotions, posing a tremendous call for effective political-administrative (P-A) crisis leadership. While the horrific fear, despair, and trauma Italy experienced during the pandemic never reached Norway and Sweden in the same way, the pandemic spread to these nations too. However, in all these countries, while collective emotional reactions of the public (such as anxiety, fear, and grief) have been researched, we would also expect political-administrative (P-A) leaders to experience and act upon collective emotions, which remains under-researched. Based on unique access to P-A leaders in the three countries, we contribute to the literature on extreme context leadership by qualitatively exploring differences in collective emotions among leaders. We show how this influences adaptive capacity across agencies, often regarded as crucial to responding effectively to societal crises such as the pandemic.