Abstract
Abstract The public sector across Europe and elsewhere was affected by the economic crisis which fully unfolded in 2008. Considerable attention has been paid in the literature to the impacts of related budgetary cuts on social welfare, while some other areas remain largely under-researched. One of such areas is the so-called civil security, where no such endeavour has been attempted so far. In order to fill this gap, the paper examines the civil security systems of Central European countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary), employing a qualitative comparative analysis. Taking on the systems perspective, the article inquires how the stress posed by the economic crisis affected the civil security systems - their structure and financing. The paper builds on the findings from a 7th FP project, “ANVIL”, within which data on civil protection and disaster management systems were collected.
Highlights
The public sector across Europe and elsewhere was affected by the economic crisis which fully unfolded in 2008
With the exception of Poland, the Central European civil security systems (CSSs) were affected by the economic crisis
Concerning the restructuring, there have been no large changes to the structure of the CSSs in the Czech Republic and Slovakia since the economic crisis began in 2008
Summary
The public sector across Europe and elsewhere was affected by the economic crisis which fully unfolded in 2008. The aim of this article is to discuss the impact of the economic crisis upon another public good so far neglected in the analyses – namely the so-called civil security. It is a common feature of security that, typically, not much attention is paid to this domain until an immediate threat appears (see, e.g., Birkland 1998). In order to address the research question, the paper employs a qualitative comparative analysis of four Central European countries as represented by the Visegrad Group (V4) This is in line with Drabek (1970) who calls for analyzing systems’ response to severe disruption (ibid, 334) and suggests studying several units (as opposed to one) exposed to such disruption.
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