Description
Crises are intrinsic part of welfare policies and public management and should be examined specifically through different ways of sensemaking, not only through the nature and demands of singular health crisis. This study seeks to answer question, how pandemic as crisis is made sense of and portrayed of in different timeframes, as a past, present, and future event, and hod does this sensemaking process challenges (e.g. evidence based approach to) welfare policy formulation.Pandemic policymaking context has been characterized by challenges to make sense of ‘issues or events that are novel, ambiguous, confusing, or in some other way violate expectations’ (Maitlis & Christianson, 2014, p. 57). Public authorities and policymakers have been contested to make sense of ambiguous events and thereby to form responses based on the ongoing sensemaking (Boin & Renaud, 2013; Desmidt & Meyfroodt, 2023).
This study contributes discussion in study group by presenting viewpoint of altering conceptions and underlining the meaning of sensemaking in policy formulation. It also explores humane conceptions affecting policy formulation process. Empirical interview data consist of the key national-level, influential Finnish pandemic policymakers, health policy and of crisis preparedness experts who were interviewed twice, in 2021 (N=21) and in winter 2022-2023 (N=16). The data is analyzed by applying discourse analysis by tracing sensemaking discourses on crises in different temporal points.
Preliminary results enlighten that 1) As a past, crisis is discussed by expressing violated expectations towards pandemic, crisis, time and globality. 2) As a present, crisis is spoken with desire to end the crisis and presenting how exceptional has started to feel as normal part of health policy, with a minor counter discourse of sense of crises and poly-crises. 3) As future, crisis is discussed with shift from crisis monolith towards multiple crisis branches and crises covering almost everything besides of health crisis.
To conclude the discursive strategies are employed to navigate and moderate the balance between normalizing and exceptionalising even the very same crisis. Temporality makes the politics of sensemaking visible in building health policies. This study contributes to the discussion in study group by presenting a viewpoint of altering conceptions and underlining the meaning of sensemaking in policy formulation.
| Period | Sept 2024 |
|---|---|
| Event title | EGPA 2024: Annual European Group of Public Administration Conference: Strengthening Democratic Governance for Better Public Policies and Services |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Athens, GreeceShow on map |