Polycentric Crisis Response

CBEES Advanced Seminar “Polycentric Crisis Response: Anticipatory governance and IDP crisis management by local public authorities in Ukraine due the Russian invasion” with Oleksandra Keudel, Associate Professor at Kyiv School of Economics, and Project-specific Researcher at the Center for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES), Södertörn University

Speaker: Oleksandra Keudel, Associate Professor at the Department of Public Policy and Governance, Kyiv School of Economics, and Project-specific Researcher at the Center for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES), Södertörn University

Discussant: Olena Shevtsova, Visiting Researcher in Public Administration, School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University

Chair: Johanna Mannergren Selimovic, Associate Professor of Peace and Development, School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, and Research Coordinator at the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES)

The paper to be presented is co-authored with Oksana Huss, Associate Researcher at the University of Bologna.

Abstract: The full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia on 24.02.2022 caused multiple crisis situations, that were too extensive to be solved by the Ukrainian authorities alone. At the same time, the war gave a spark the unprecedented mobilization of citizens across the country. This paper aims to analyze how local public authorities deal with the crises they faced due to the extensive waves of IDPs.
The analysis is based on the survey of local public authorities (241 responses), commissioned by the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe and conducted in cooperation with the Association of Ukrainian Cities in September 2022. In addition, the interviews with representatives of LPAs in different types of hromadas (urban and rural, rare, and de-occupied hromadas) provide insights into crisis responses.
The concept of anticipatory governance provides the analytical framework for the research. The concept consists of three strands to analyze responses to a crisis: (1) policy planning based on multiple scenarios, (2) stakeholder engagement and multi-stakeholder collaboration, (3) possibility for feedback loops to ensure policy adjustments. The underlying assumption is that the elements of anticipatory governance work as a mechanism that sustains crisis response in a polycentric governance system.

Oleksandra Keudel is an Associate Professor at the Department of Public Policy and Governance at Kyiv School of Economics and a project-specific researcher at the Center for Baltic and East European Studies at Södertörn University. Her research focuses on societal resilience and local governance in Ukraine. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Freie Universität Berlin, an MSc in International Administration and Global Governance from the University of Gothenburg (Sweden). She has been a visiting researcher to the George Washington University and NYU. She authored “How Patronal Networks Shape Opportunities for Local Citizen Participation in a Hybrid Regime: A Comparative Analysis of Five Cities in Ukraine Länk till annan webbplats, öppnas i nytt fönster.”, published with ibidem/Columbia University Press in 2022.