P31 Societal security, total preparedness and robust governance through public governance, administration and collaboration

Panel Chairs

Corresponding chair

• Professor Jacob Torfing, Department of Social Science and Business, Roskilde University, Denmark. jtor@ruc.dk

Review group chair

• Professor Tiina Randma-Liiv, Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia. tiina.randmaliiv@gmail.com

Co-Chairs

• Professor Eckhard Schroeter, German University of the Police, Münster, Germany.
• Associate Professor Elias Pekkola, Tampere University.
• Professor Karina Furtado Rodrigues, Escola de Comando e Estado-Maior do Exército Karina.
• University Instructor, Johanna Liljeroos-Cork, Tampere University

Panel Topic Description

Security, defence and crisis management have become increasingly salient concerns for public administration scholarship and practice in an era characterized by polycrisis, wicked problems and grand challenges. Contemporary societies face a growing convergence of geopolitical, technological, environmental and societal disruptions that amplify uncertainty and place significant demands on public institutions. Cyber-attacks, hybrid threats, political polarization, climate-related crises, pandemics and pressures on critical infrastructure increasingly interact across sectoral and administrative boundaries, challenging traditional governance arrangements.

These disruptive developments have renewed interest in concepts such as total preparedness, comprehensive security and robust governance that seek to sustain essential societal functions, protect populations, uphold democratic values and preserve social cohesion under conditions of extraordinary stress. In this context, public institutions must build capacities through which efforts to ensure continuity and spur adaptation and innovation can be coordinated across governmental, economic, military and civic domains.

The panel examines how public management, public policy and governance research can contribute to understanding the evolving relationship between defence policy, societal security, crisis management and robust governance. It welcomes contributions that explore how geopolitical change and shifting security environments influence public governance, organizational design and policy development. Contributions may address, for example, public investment in defence and security, the institutionalization of civilian oversight and democratic accountability, or the ways in which public organizations prepare for, manage and learn from crises. The panel is particularly interested in the distinctive characteristics of security and defence organizations and how these shape governance processes. Relevant themes include civil-military relations, interorganizational coordination, professional roles and cultures, organizational incentives and the tension between transparency and secrecy in public administration.

The panel also invites critical engagement with resilience and robustness as both analytical concepts and normative governance objectives. While resilience and robustness are commonly understood as the capacity of organizations, communities and systems to adapt and perhaps even innovate in the face turbulence in order to preserve core public functions, purposes and values, growing scholarship has highlighted its potential constraints and limitations as well as unintended consequences. In particular, resilience may shift responsibility for safety and security from the state to individuals, communities or non-state actors, thereby obscuring structural vulnerabilities and weakening public capacity.

By bringing together theoretical, empirical, methodological and practice-oriented contributions, the panel seeks to advance public administration scholarship on security governance, robust governance and total preparedness. It aims to identify the conditions under which public organizations can strengthen societal security while avoiding an overly reactive or depoliticized understanding of crisis management and resilience.

We invite theoretical, empirical, methodological and practice-oriented contributions. Papers may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• The contribution of public administration, public managers, professionals, elected representatives, civil society and affected communities to preparedness, societal resilience and robust governance capacity
• The causes, dynamics and consequences of societal turbulence, polycrisis, wicked problems and cascading crises for public administration, governance and crisis management
• Theoretical and conceptual debates on robust governance, resilience, agility, total preparedness, comprehensive security and risk governance, including their complementarities, tensions and normative implications
• The institutional conditions and governance mechanisms associated with robust governance, including hybrid governance, multilevel governance, collaborative governance, co-creation, societal intelligence and cross-boundary coordination
• The transition from sectoral emergency preparedness to total preparedness, comprehensive security, civil protection and whole-of-society approaches to societal resilience
• The design, implementation and evaluation of preparedness, crisis-management, cybersecurity, information-security, defence and security policies within public administration systems
• Emerging and evolving threats to safety and security, including cyber-attacks, hybrid warfare, domestic polarization, climate change, pandemics, transnational crime, critical-infrastructure disruptions and the militarization of public security
• The governance, management and administration of security professionals, including police officers, firefighters, border guards, emergency-service personnel and other frontline professionals operating across safety, security and crisis-management systems
• Public investment in defence and security, including the ways in which peace, war, fiscal pressures and geopolitical change shape defence expenditure, civilian engagement and the policy cycle
• Civilian oversight, democratic control, transparency, accountability, legitimacy, effectiveness and efficiency in military bureaucracies and security-sector organizations
• Institutional and methodological questions concerning military, defence and security organizations, public administration reforms, career structures, incentive systems, policy implementation, measurement, impact analysis and comparative or configurational research designs

Panel Format

The panel format will be fairly standard with short paper presentations followed by comments from discussants and open plenary discussions with active engagement of the audience to facilitate lively discussion. Paper givers are expected to read the other papers within the panel and will be invited to comment on them.