Three Ph.D. positions in crisis management

<p><b>Three Ph.D. positions in crisis management</b></p> <p> </p> <p>The Institute of Political Science at Leiden University is looking to hire three Ph.D. students (Aio’s). The positions are part of the NWO-funded Gravitation (Zwaartekracht) program Adapt! This ten-year program will investigate how societies can navigate large-scale crises and disasters in an effective and legitimate manner, without undermining key societal values and democratic processes. More information on the Adapt! Program can be found at www.adapt-academy.nl.<br/> The three positions are part of Work Package 3 (Strategic governance capacity). A brief description of the three projects is described below.</p> <p> </p> <p><b>Project 1: Towards robust crisis detection and response mechanisms</b><br/> It is, of course, best to nip a crisis in the bud. When a looming crisis is in its earliest stages of development, it may be still possible to intervene with relatively low costs and high chances of success. Unfortunately, it is not always easy to recognize an unfolding crisis. The list of organizations and governments that somehow missed a crisis is very long.</p> <p> </p> <p>This PhD project seeks to uncover success factors. The PhD student will study how organizations create systemic cultures of alertness that help to detect signals of emerging threats. The project will build on the theory of high reliability organisations (HROs). This project will explore whether HRO principles help to detect crises in a timely way. It will focus on the recognition and handling of so-called anomalous events. It will study HROs that routinely deal with the challenge of threat recognition in the three threat domains (e.g., public order disturbances, pandemics, and extreme weather). <br/>  </p> <p><b>Project 2: Towards high-performing crisis response networks</b><br/> When government actors initiate a crisis response, it is important to identify problems, formulate solutions, and ensure their implementation in a timely and acceptable fashion. The Covid-19 crisis demonstrated just how challenging this task can be. The crisis literature suggests that four types of activities are key to effective problem-solving in times of crisis: </p> <p> </p> <p>Information management: governments need to collect, select, and process relevant information that sheds light on the causes and consequences of crisis-induced problems and the possible solutions that might be tried. </p> <p> </p> <p>Critical decision-making: governments need to identify and prioritise solutions that will limit the impact of the crisis. <br/> Collaborative management: governments must implement their solutions, and they cannot do this alone. They must work with other government organisations (including foreign and international organisations). They must align their knowledge, priorities, and resources with those of community and private actors to co-produce an integrated approach to arrive at coherent responses. </p> <p> </p> <p>Crisis communication: governments will find it hard to produce an effective and legitimate response without the help of the population. They will need to inform, engage, and persuade citizens. In addition, it is important to inform all the members of the response network. The challenge is to offer a convincing narrative in the face of many competing counter-narratives. This project investigates the success and failure factors in the fulfilment of these four tasks in a detailed comparison of governmental responses to the same type of crisis (for instance, the Covid-19 pandemic in the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden). </p> <p> </p> <p><b>Project 3: Ethics of crisis leadership </b><br/> Crisis leaders must often choose between policy options that embody conflicting values. These moral dilemmas are particularly likely to occur in high-stakes situations with a necessity to act under conditions of deep uncertainty. In the context of the Covid-19 crisis, for instance, leaders had to weigh the importance of health protection against the freedom of movement. </p> <p> </p> <p>This situation pitched the interests of the majority against those of a sizeable minority (think of curfews and vaccine passports).</p> <p> </p> <p>This project will study how crisis leaders may develop and employ an ethical approach to decision-making in times of crisis. It will employ a case-study approach, investigating the decision-making processes in a small set of well-documented crises (for example, the Cuba Missile Crisis). It will study how crisis leaders handle ethical concerns raised by politicians and journalists. Moreover, it will study how perceptions of ethical decisions affect the perceived legitimacy of governmental crisis management performance.<br/>  </p> <p><b>What you will do</b></p> <ul> <li>You will do research that will result in a Ph.D. and will contribute to the larger aims of the Adapt program.</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><b>What we are looking for</b></p> <ul> <li>You have a (Rese