Armano Srbljinović¹ 0000-0003-0676-2842,
Jasmina Božić² 0000-0001-9683-420X and
Brian D. Fath<sup>3, 4

1</sup>Zagreb, Croatia
²University of Zagreb - Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
  Zagreb, Croatia
³Towson University - Department of Biological Sciences
  Towson, Maryland, USA
⁴International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis - Advanced Systems Analysis Program
  Laxenburg, Austria

INDECS 18(4), 408-424, 2020 DOI 10.7906/indecs.18.4.1 Full text available here.

Received: 29th July 2020. Accepted: 9th September 2020. Regular article

ABSTRACT

We analyse the Croatian crisis management system's response to COVID-19 pandemic in terms of Fath, Dean, and Katzmair's [1] model of resilience in social systems. We find that the CCMS has successfully completed one cycle of the model. However, if the system is to achieve resilience, it also needs to replace the regime from before the crisis with a new regime that will simultaneously enable a life of relative normalcy and contain an excessive spread of the virus. Strengthening social cohesion and more bottom-up, emergent leadership might facilitate the search for a new regime. Small, local outbreaks represent small-scale disturbances that provide opportunities for development of cohesion and bottom-up leadership from local, county, municipal and city-levels to the national level. The model used in this article better conveys the underlying complexity of crisis management systems than "the hammer and the dance" model, whereas the latter is better suited for public communication. Future work should extend this case study in terms of modelling approaches, the sample of countries, and the time covered. It can also be extended to lower, sub-national, as well as higher, supra-national levels, such as the EU.