CMC-19

Centre for Small State Studies

The COVID-19 pandemic sparked a wave of events that profoundly disrupted daily life, social norms and economic stability. It posed an urgent threat to basic structures and fundamental values of nation states and forced leaders to take major decisions under pressure and deep uncertainty.

Crisis Management and the Covid-19 Pandemic: Leadership, Expertise and Best Practices

This project established a network of leading scholars in the field of crisis management to analyze, evaluate and compare the strategic responses of Iceland, Greenland, Norway, Sweden, the Faroe Islands, Finland and Denmark to the COVID19 crisis, sharing experiences and best practices with the aim of strengthening resilience and coordination between the Nordic countries for future intra-national crisis management.

The consortium applied a renowned comparative case study framework on crisis management that has been developed to analyse decision-making and policy-making dynamics in extraordinary situations. The different population size of the Nordic countries presents an opportunity to evaluate to what extent the size of a state’s public administration and governance can potentially influence the way in which it responds to a crisis situation. Research shows that there are fundamental differences between the functioning of governance in small and large states - differences that have not been adequately addressed in the crisis management literature. The different strategies that the culturally similar Nordic countries have opted for provides an excellent laboratory to study both the effectiveness of their approaches to crisis management and regional cooperation.

Publications

A Special Section - The Nordic Countries’ crisis management of the Covid-19 pandemic: The effect of size

Guest Editors: Ásthildur Elva Bernhardsdóttir and Baldur Thorhallsson in the journal Small States & Territories (ISSN: 2616-8006), Vol. 8, No. 2, November 2025, (pages 375-440).

This special section in SST deals with size-related challenges and opportunities in the seven Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe …

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Introduction: Nordic countries’ crisis management of the COVID-19 pandemic: The effect of size

The effect of size – Á. E. Bernhardsdóttir and B. Thorhallsson (pages 375-388).

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The effect of size and the Nordic states’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic: Reactive or proactive?

M. Ackrén, N. Hokkala, P. Lægreid, E. Palmujoki, A. Trengereid, Á. E. Bernhardsdóttir, M. Koraeus, R. Olavson, B. Thorhallsson and K. Vrangbæk (pages 389-408)

This paper examines whether the small size of the public administration of the seven Nordic countries affected the nature of their crisis responses, focusing on the …

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Cooperation problems and bureaucratic infighting in small states: Lack of planning and unclear rules?

M. Ackrén, N. Hokkala, P. Lægreid, E. Palmujoki, A. Trengereid, Á. E. Bernhardsdóttir, M. Koraeus, R. Olavson, B. Thorhallsson and K. Vrangbæk (pages 409-422)

This comparative study of the seven Nordic countries supports the assumption that cooperation problems and bureaucratic infighting in small states during the early stages of the …

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Small elite network and less formal governance structure: Efficient knowledge sharing and rapid policy responses?

M. Ackrén, N. Hokkala, P. Lægreid, E. Palmujoki, A. Trengereid, Á. E. Bernhardsdóttir, M. Koraeus, R. Olavson, B. Thorhallsson and K. Vrangbæk (pages 423-440)

This paper analyzes whether the seven Nordic countries, by virtue of their limited administrative size and less formalized governance arrangements, were particularly well-suited to fostering rapid …

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