Grant awarded: Berkeley-Bergen research cooperation
Professor Per Lægreid and Post doc Lise H. Rykkja at the University of Bergen have together with Professor Chris Ansell at UC Berkeley been awarded Peder Sæther grant for cooperation on the project “Organizing for Societal Security and Crisis Management.”
Main content
The grant awarded from the Peder Sæther Center for Advanced Study will establish a Bergen-Berkeley research cooperation on “Organizing for Societal Security and Crisis Management.”
Research question and purpose
The project studies governance capacityfor societal security and crisis management and is linked to the GOVCAP project financed from the Norwegian Research Council. The overall research question is: What makes a well performing governmental crisis management system?
The project will examine the organization and coordination of public resources, decision-making systems and governance tools that are implemented in Norway and the USA to deal with crises. It will explore why some crises are seemingly handled successfully, while others are not, and identify relevant dimensions across different countries and cases for evaluating the elements of success, or failure.
The overall aim is to strengthen the knowledge base concerning pressing governance dilemmas within societal security, safety and resilience. A core concern is how overall performance is affected by organizational capacity and choices about organization. By comparing cases from Norway and the US, we expect to gain new and crucial knowledge relevant to the research field.
Participants and activities
The project brings together highly profiled and seasoned scholars in Norway and at Berkeley. In Norway the Principal Investigator will be Professor Per Lægreid, University of Bergen. Other project participants will be post doc Lise H. Rykkja , University of Bergen and Professor Tom Christensen, University of Oslo. At Berkeley, the Principle Investigator will be Professor Chris Ansell. Other project participants include Emery Roe from Berkeley and Paul Schulman, Mills College.
A main activity in this project is to organize a two-day workshop at Berkeley. The workshop will include well established scholars and promising early career researchers and PhD students from Norway and Berkeley on the topic of organizing for internal security and crisis management.
Peder Sæther, a farmer’s son from Norway, emigrated to America in 1832 and eventually became one of California’s richest men. Sæther is considered one of the founding fathers of the University of California (UC) Berkeley.
The Peder Sather Center for Advanced Study is an International Research and Educational Collaboration between UC Berkeley and Norway.
