<p>When the Tsunami occurred on Boxing Day 2004 it caused a major stress upon the governmental agencies in not only the affected areas but also in states that had a large number of citizens in the affected area. The governmental agencies were not prepared for the demands from the citizenry in these countries to deal with rescue and crisis management in areas situated halfway around the globe. This thesis main purpose is to research what the causal mechanisms of Sweden’s and Finland’s crisis management were through the method of process tracing. Taking its theoretical stance in Allison’s & Zelikow’s three models of decision making, the thesis compares the course of events of the first two critical days in Sweden and Finland to establish what mistakes were made during this critical period. The main findings of the essay show that none of the theories is on its own capable of explaining the chain of events, but a combination of the organisational model and the governmental politics model do prove the necessity of trained crisis personnel as decision-makers early on in crisis management as well as the need for an organisational structure with a linear and clear chain of command.</p>

When the Tsunami occurred on Boxing Day 2004 it caused a major stress upon the governmental agencies in not only the affected areas but also in states that had a large number of citizens in the affected area. The governmental agencies were not prepared for the demands from the citizenry in these countries to deal with rescue and crisis management in areas situated halfway around the globe. This thesis main purpose is to research what the causal mechanisms of Sweden’s and Finland’s crisis management were through the method of process tracing. Taking its theoretical stance in Allison’s &amp; Zelikow’s three models of decision making, the thesis compares the course of events of the first two critical days in Sweden and Finland to establish what mistakes were made during this critical period. The main findings of the essay show that none of the theories is on its own capable of explaining the chain of events, but a combination of the organisational model and the governmental politics model do prove the necessity of trained crisis personnel as decision-makers early on in crisis management as well as the need for an organisational structure with a linear and clear chain of command.