Resilience building during the management of the COVID‐19 crisis in Lithuania: Major breakthroughs and incremental change

Abstract

Modern societies are facing an increasing number of transboundary systemic threats. The sudden spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has once again highlighted concerns about governments' capacity to deal with disruptions and stressed the need for more resilient governance arrangements. Besides the usual policymaking, the latter might emerge from decisions, made during the crisis management as well. Building on ideas of the new institutionalism, more specifically, the normative logic of appropriateness and the rational logic of consequentiality, we examine how different mechanisms in varying contexts lead to different types of resilience building. Based on the results of pattern matching applied to the Lithuanian case of COVID-19 crisis management in 2020, we argue that in environments where the logic of consequentiality was dominant, resilience was mostly strengthened because of major breakthroughs, stemming from coercive pressures as well as top-down policy action from the centre of government. In contrast, more incremental developments contributed to resilience building through normative or mimetic pressures, professionalization, network-based and bottom-up practices in environments, where the logic of appropriateness prevailed. We claim that, while the logic of consequentiality helps to strengthen resilience in the context of turbulence, the logic of appropriateness is especially important for ensuring its sustainability.