Bonnie Peterson - Böcker

COVID-19, Public Management, and Survival of East European Democracies centers initially on the development of democracy in fourteen states of Eastern Europe, with an emphasis on the distinction between the seven Baltic and East Central European states in the north and the seven Balkan states in the south. Examination of key events of the political history of the two regions reveals that a participant political culture as the anchor of democracy was more developed in the north than in the south. Important measures of democracy as well as election results during the 2020-22 period of the COVID-19 outbreak demonstrate and reinforce the same distinctions between the two regions. Further, this detailed study of public administration problems such as corruption, accountability, trust, and the number of deaths from COVID-19 also disclose that such problems characterized both regions but were more pronounced in the southern states. In addition, the rise of populism and authoritarianism injected severe challenges in the midst of administrative preoccupation with the many harmful effects of the virus.

Both the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine became major crises for public managers in the Visegrad 4 states of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia.  Each of those states responded in different ways to the two crises, based on their ideologies and levels of capabilities.   Of course, the two crises themselves were very different in terms of their impact on the public and the set of public managers that needed to make critical decisions.  This work proposes that there are three stages in crisis management, and that theoretical perspective will lay the groundwork for analysis of the four states.  Those stages include Risk Assessment, Risk Management, and Risk Communication. Taken together, they offer a portrayal of the Resilience of each state in terms of both public management and the general public.