The Road to a Europe That Protects: Civil Protection, Trust, and the Culture of Public Administration in the EU

The EU and its member states have committed themselves to the protection of their citizens, and a Europe that protects must be able to respond effectively when disaster strikes. In this chapter the authors explain why they treat civil protection and crisis management as crucial cases for investigating which factors—such as trust, public-administration culture, and public-administration structure—facilitate or hinder effective EU cooperation. In addition to investigating the main divides and unifying patterns of cooperation that exist among the EU member states, the authors combine knowledge from crisis management studies together with insights from public and social capital studies to examine to what extent so-called ‘software factors’, such as culture and social trust, matter for achieving effective civil protection cooperation and crisis management.