The challenge of administrative capacity and transboundary coordination. The case of the Norwegian police and military

Abstract

This paper examines how the relationships between the military and the police has changed after the terrorist attacks in Norway in 2011 by focusing on transboundary coordination capacity. We address the change of the regulatory arrangements of how the police can ask for assistance from the military during a crisis and how the military and the police cooperated to implement the regulations on how to protect important public buildings and facilities. The processes and outcome is analyzed from a hierarchical perspective, a negotiation perspective and an institutional approach focusing on the cultural features and administrative traditions. A main finding is that there is a lot of coordination and collaboration challenges which mainly can be explained from a negotiation and a cultural perspective.