This contribution investigates citizens’ legitimacy perceptions of region-specific crisis interventions in transboundary crisis management. Because transboundary crises (i.e., natural disasters and epidemic outbreaks) can have an uneven impact on different regions, region-specific crisis interventions offer a flexible and tailor-made strategy to deal with different regional circumstances (Boin & Lodge, 2016). However, cross-regional differences in a crisis response present challenges to legitimacy. Legitimacy is important for crisis management, because it forms the basis for citizens to accept and comply with emergency rules (Christensen et al., 2016). But are citizens willing to accept stringent crisis measures in their own region, while citizens in other parts of a country are exempted from restrictions?

In this contribution, we develop a theoretical argument on how citizens evaluate region-specific crisis interventions. Combining insights from political science and social psychology, we expect that citizens will consider national uniformity of crisis measures as more legitimate, compared to regional diversity. From a public administration perspective, we theorize that multi-level governance might impact the legitimacy of region-specific crisis interventions: citizens are more likely to accept region-specific measures from their regional government rather than the national government, particularly in federal/decentralized countries.

To test our assumptions, we conducted a pre-registered survey experiment among a representative sample of N=2400 citizens from two countries: Germany and the Netherlands. We use a fictional scenario of the implementation of a lockdown in response to a novel virus outbreak. Our design manipulates two factors: the level of decision-making authority (national vs. regional government) and policy uniformity (national uniformity vs. regional diversity). With our country selection, we can compare findings from a federal state (Germany) with an unitary state, with weak responsibilities for regional governments (The Netherlands).

For the Netherlands, we find that regional policy diversity decreases legitimacy perceptions, but this relationship was non-existent in Germany. Surprisingly, our findings do not provide evidence that multi-level governance impacts the legitimacy of region-specific crisis interventions. These results hold relevant insights for the modern era of governance, in which the legitimacy of crisis management might become more challenged due to the increasing complexity of crises and the growing polarization in democratic societies.

This paper aims to compare citizen’s perceptions of climate change and antimicrobial resistance (AMR). These are creeping crises that affect societies and individuals and call for different types of actions, involve different types of public engagement, and vary in the degree of politicization. Using unique data from the Norwegian Citizen Panel, an online survey with a random sample of Norwegian citizens, we show that AMR is perceived by Norwegian citizens as a more serious threat – personally, nationally, and globally than the climate crisis. We investigate factors that can explain variations in perceptions linked to trust, fear, attitudes towards international collaboration and socioeconomic variables and show that fear is the dominating factor in explaining the variation in perceptions regarding how serious the crises are for the world. Trust and perception regarding international collaboration have no effects. After presenting and discussing the results, the paper concludes with reflections on the implications for policy-making and governing institutions, addressing how different perceptions can influence the prioritization of policy measures and resource allocation.

Amidst the backdrop of a poly-crisis characterized by turbulence, wicked problems, emergencies, and uncertainty, this research addresses the pressing need to understand the dynamics of crisis decision-making within the European Union (Zeitlin et al., 2019). Hybrid governance, blending diverse governance mechanisms, has emerged as a concept of interest in crisis decision-making by offering a nuanced perspective to addressing multifaceted crises that defy traditional categorization (Gjaltema et al, 2019; Larsson, 2017; Meuleman, 2019; Sørensen and Torfing 2019). However, its conceptualization and application in crisis decision-making, particularly within the EU, remains underexplored. Drawing from multidisciplinary literature, this research addresses this gap by investigating the occurrence of hybrid mechanisms into EU crisis decision-making processes during the Covid-19 pandemic as well as to explore the different types of hybrid configurations that emerged throughout different stages of the crisis response.

To achieve this objective, a mixed-methods approach combining desk research and interviews with EU officials will be employed. The research design adopts a qualitative approach to explore the dynamics of crisis decision-making within the EU framework. In order to draw a comprehensive picture a multiple case study was conducted where three separate EU policy responses, covering three different policy domains affected by Covid-19 were chosen, not only to identify the co-presence of various governance arrangements but also to analyse the hybrid dynamics that occurred in the context of EU level crisis decision making during the covid-19 pandemic. Firstly, freedom of movement in the Schengen area explores the implications of the pandemic on the Schengen area's border management policies and the EU's response to the challenges posed by the need to balance public health concerns with the principles of free movement. Secondly, vaccine procurement undertaken by the EU sheds light on hybrid governance mechanisms in facilitating coordinated efforts to secure vaccines and ensure equitable distribution among member states. Lastly, the Recovery and Resilience Facility examines the EU's economic recovery measures and the integration of hybrid approaches in addressing the socio-economic impacts of the pandemic through financial assistance and policy reforms.

Not only does the research provide insights on the practical implementation of hybrid governance in crisis management within the unique supranational institutional framework of EU. The paper further contributes to understanding the dynamics of EU crisis decision-making, shedding light on hybrid mechanisms that are employed in the three selected policy domains. As well as on the dynamic hybrid configurations that emerged following a common temporal pattern to face the pandemic. The use of hybrid configurations further aligns with the broader paradigmatic shift, which is observed in crisis decision-making across the EU, characterized by politicized dynamics favouring collaborative Europeanisation (Corti & Vesan, 2023; Ladi and Wolff, 2021).