Critical Infrastructure and Crisis Affected Actor? Investigating the Double Role of Municipal Administrations

Abstract

This WiP article presents first insights from two German research projects (one ongoing, one completed) on the double role of municipal administrations in crisis management. The ongoing project examines the municipal crisis management during COVID-19, the completed one focused on the 2015/2016 refugee situation in Germany. While crisis management has previously rather been associated with “blue-light organizations”, these two circumstances rather called for a predominantly administrative crisis management. While adapting to this new role, administrations had to maintain key public services: They had to perform as crisis managers while maintaining their function as a critical infrastructure despite being affected themselves for several reasons. Since 2015, public administration in Germany has found itself in almost constant crisis management mode, giving opportunity to learn and to adjust self-perception. Based on empirical analyses of interview data we aim to discuss the following questions: How did the two roles influence each other in the situations mentioned? Has anything changed between these situations?