IRSPM 2027 Conference – Trondheim, Norway

The concept of 'polycrisis' — popularized by historian Adam Tooze and adopted by the World Economic Forum in its 2023 Global Risks Report — describes the simultaneous, interacting shocks that have defined the 2020s: the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing energy and food crises, accelerating climate disasters, inflation, mass displacement, and the destabilizing effects of generative AI and disinformation. These compound crises have exposed the limits of traditional public administration, which was largely designed for discrete, predictable problems within sectoral silos. The parallel literatures on 'wicked problems' (Rittel and Webber, 1973) and 'grand challenges' (echoed in the EU's Horizon Europe missions and the UN's 2030 Agenda) have re-emerged as frames for understanding why issues such as climate adaptation, pandemic preparedness, and AI governance defy conventional bureaucratic problem-solving. For public management scholars and practitioners — the core audience of IRSPM — the question is how states can deliver safety and security when threats are transboundary, cascading, and contested. Post-2020 reforms have emphasized anticipatory governance, whole-of-government coordination, resilience planning, and the integration of behavioral and data science into crisis response. The EU's Strategic Foresight Reports, the OECD's work on anticipatory innovation, NATO's resilience commitments under Article 3, and Nordic 'total defence' doctrines (notably Sweden's and Norway's revived civil preparedness frameworks) all illustrate attempts to rewire public administration for permanent turbulence. Yet these efforts confront persistent obstacles: fiscal constraints after pandemic-era spending, democratic backsliding, declining trust in institutions, and the politicization of expertise. The debate today centers on what 'safety and security' should mean in an era when civil protection, defence, climate, public health, and digital infrastructure converge. Trondheim is a fitting venue: Norway has been a leading laboratory for integrating societal security (samfunnssikkerhet) into public administration since the 2011 Utøya attacks and the 2016 Total Defence concept revival, and it sits at the intersection of NATO's northern flank, Arctic governance, and energy security. Delegates will weigh how administrative systems can balance preparedness with civil liberties, central coordination with local agility, and national security with international cooperation.