Resilience work in Swedish local governance : Evidence from the areas of climate change adaptation, migration, and violent extremism

• The concept of resilience is multidimensional, multiscalar, and contextualized, whereas global shifts ripple down to the local level, creating tangible consequences for local communities. In this chapter, we investigate how resilient processes play out in the context of emergency preparedness in three Swedish municipalities and thus examine the understanding of risk, through the concept of resilience in an advanced Western democracy. Our case studies were three municipalities spanning the demographic gamut of Swedish local authorities (Malmö, Arboga, and Örebro) in the broad empirical areas of climate change adaptation, migration, and violent extremism. We conducted a qualitative, inductive analysis with the aid of Atlas.ti on group interviews with stakeholders from the local authority and NGOs in all municipalities and empirical areas. With our analysis focusing on similarities across local authorities and empirical areas, we found that resilience as a concept is not yet integrated in the everyday operations of the local authorities, which instead work with the concept of sustainability. What is more, dominant themes that emerge across the board when it comes to emergency preparedness are collaboration, legitimacy, power relations, and projectification of work.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Statsvetenskap -- Studier av offentlig förvaltning (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Political Science -- Public Administration Studies (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Emergency preparedness

Sweden

Local governance

Resilience

Collaboration

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kap (subject category)