The terrorist attacks on July 22, 2011 (the «22/7»), is unparalleled in Norwegian context. The attacks came unexpected. The «July 22 Commission» received the demanding task to answer the questions of what happened and why. Their report received much attention and its analysis, assessments and conclusions were widely accepted and renowned by the government, media and public opinion in general. But how to proceed to answering questions related to very unexpected events, and how to assess the first responders’ response? Discussions of the analysis and assessments in the commission report are scarce. Very little of the critique have been based on research on the actual content of the report. This article is in this sense an exception. It conducts a textual analysis of the Commission’s interpretation of its own task and its analysis of police operation Utøya drawing on theoretical perspectives and concepts from philosophy of science and decision making theory.

The analysis finds that the Commission in its interpretation of own task drew on different considerations and perspectives that sometimes were contradictory. This diversity in perspectives is gone in its analysis of the police action Utøya. Then the primary purpose is to explain and assess the results of police action, particularly important is to assess whether the actors should have acted differently. The article finds that the Commission on the question of accountability is unclear on what and how much can be attributed respectively to actors and system factors. Furthermore, the Commission’s analysis and assessments draws occasionally on information which the actors involved could not know at that time – post-knowledge becomes pre-knowledge. Thus, these assessments are made on the wrong basis, if the aim is to make opinions on the basis of the situation-perspective the actors had at that time. The article shows the importance of not accepting governmental inquiry commissions’ analyzes, assessments and conclusions without further ado, and making them subject to research and critical debate.

The article presents a case study of Ila Prison and the imprisonment of Anders Behring Breivik after the terror attacks in Norway 22/7-11. The case is an example of how an organization handles a critical situation, and the research question to be answered is: How can leaders’ sequential patterns of actions in a critical situation be understood? The study shows that the organizational structure at Ila, at the time of the terror attacks, was not dimensioned to meet the requirements that the imprisonment of Breivik implied. Because of the critical shortage of time and the immediate need for action, members of a temporary organization incorporated the informal principle «just do it». The imprisonment of Breivik implied that staff got access to classified information, and in order to reduce the risk for leaks, the informal principle «need to know» was incorporated as well. These two informal principles resulted in a loose coupling from the formal organizational structure, where the ordinary chain of command was broken and an alternative sequential pattern of action was established. Clearly defined expectations from the environment influenced the leaders’ sensemaking. They chose to improvise and deviated from the routines to achieve better flexibility. The study confirms earlier research showing that flexibility is crucial for organizations’ ability to act quickly in demanding contexts, but it also suggests that there may be a conflict between the « just do it» and «need to know»-principles.

This article explores the Norwegian health authorities’ handling of the 2009 Swine flu outbreak, with a weight on the external communication aimed at the population through media in three phases of the pandemic. Crisis communication is regarded as a process of producing meaning, aiming at legitimizing the crisis-handling role of public authorities. We analyze the shaping of the communication in interaction between political leadership, administrative authority and health expertise. We find that several principles guided the governmental communication strategy; one of the crucial aims was to secure unitary and clear messages and to speak with a single voice. Our analysis shows, however, that it was demanding to maintain the balance between the different communication principles, and that the involved governmental bodies stressed these principles differently. In particular, we found tensions regarding the prioritizing between governmental action and control on the one hand and openness on the uncertainty of information on the pandemic situation on the other. Our analysis indicates that differentiation between governmental actors and clarification of roles in external communication may be crucial in order to maintain a successful crisis communication.

This article deals with the «duty of care» held by states for their citizens, when the citizens are abroad. The arguments are based on general developmental traits common to modern states, but the main case is the relationship between the Norwegian state and its citizens. The article raises two main questions, firstly how it became self-evident that the state has a duty of care for its citizens abroad, secondly under what circumstances and in which ways this duty is articulated and put on the political agenda. The first question is answered through an historical and comparative analysis, emphasizing how ties of loyalty between states and citizens developed, and how the legitimacy of modern welfare-states became tied to the will and capacity of states to care for its citizens. The second question is answered through an analysis of a number of fairly recent «crises». Here, special attention is paid to how the media are central to the articulation of crisis, how there is a growing need for the government to act rapidly and visibly in the face of crisis and the tension between the need to demonstrate strength in the face of crisis and the desire that citizens should take greater responsibility for themselves when traveling abroad.