Leading in Crises

Let us begin by looking at three government leaders who were faced with major emergencies and how they fared. In August 2002, some six weeks before the scheduled national elections, flooding of the River Elbe hit eastern parts of Germany. When the floods hit, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s position as head of a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens was relatively weak, with his government lagging behind the Christian Democrats in the polls. Despite responsibility for the emergency response lying with the states (Länder) rather than the federal government, Schröder visited disaster-struck areas and quickly made available emergency funds to aid the relief and recovery effort. These gestures conveyed the impression of a leader who genuinely cared and was decisive when needed. His chief opponent at the election, Christian-Democrat Edmund Stoiber elected to stay away from the flooded areas, as he had nothing concrete to offer as opposition leader and did not want to be seen to be drawing resources away from relief operations. The public interpreted this as a critical lack of judgement. Stoiber — who was also the chief minister of the rich southern state of Bavaria — apparently had no empathy with the plight of the poor former East German population affected by the floods. The contrasting crisis leadership performances of the two election candidates were later shown to be a major factor in Schröder’s surprise election victory a few weeks later (Bytzek 2008).