The Political Economy of Crisis Management: Surprise, Urgency, and Mistakes in Political Decision Making

A crisis typically has three characteristics. First, a crisis is unexpected, a complete surprise. Second, a crisis is normally unpleasant in that current plans are found to work less well than had been anticipated. Third, a crisis requires an urgent response of some kind. That is to say, an immediate change of plans is expected to reduce or avoid the worst consequences associated with the unpleasant surprise. These characteristics imply that not every public policy problem is a crisis, because many public policy problems are anticipated or long-standing. The present social security problem faced by most Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations is not a crisis, although it is a serious problem. Other policy problems are clearly worsened rather than improved when current policies are abandoned. This may be said of constitutional law, in cases in which minor unexpected problems arise from longstanding political procedures. Other policy problems lack immediacy, even when they are unanticipated. This might be argued, for example, of global warming, which was unanticipated prior to 1990 yet is anticipated to take decades to emerge. Not every serious problem is a crisis.¹