The challenge of transboundary coordination: The case of the Norwegian police and military

Abstract

This article examines how the transboundary coordination capacity between the military and the police has changed since the terrorist attacks in Norway in 2011. We address changes in the arrangements that regulate how the police can ask for assistance from the military during a crisis and how the military and the police cooperate to implement the regulations designed to protect important public buildings and facilities. The processes and the outcome are analyzed from a hierarchical perspective, a negotiation perspective and an institutional perspective. A main finding is that there are many transboundary coordination challenges, which can mainly be explained from a negotiation and a cultural perspective. Both path dependencies and negotiations constrained the process and led to incremental changes.