Arguably, the way in which problems are defined publicly permeates most of the other crisis leadership challenges. For example, if a crisis is seen as a case of pure misfortune, triggered by factors that none of the relevant policymakers could realistically have been expected to foresee or control, the debates about accountability and learning will be shaped quite differently from instances in which the crisis is widely seen to have been predictable and avoidable (Bovens and ’t Hart 1996). Past research suggests that when critical contingencies unfold, politicians and senior public policymakers (as distinct from operational incident managers, who face more hands-on questions) are expected to provide answers to the same recurrent questions:

Clearly, answering each of these questions in the public arena is bound to be a matter of judgment and, more often than not, controversy. As implied above, how these questions are being answered in any given crisis has political and policy consequences. Politically, the ways in which causes and responsibilities are framed can have a severe impact on the public support for key actors and institutions. When something bad happens in a society, someone or something will be held to account. Apportioning blame is an integral part of contemporary politics in times of crisis (Bovens and ’t Hart 1996; Brändström and Kuipers 2003; Furedi 2005; Boin et al. 2008). In policy terms, the very occurrence of significant crises (rather than run-of-the-mill incidents or slow-burning problems) raises acute questions about the effectiveness and robustness of current policies and institutions. In doing so, crises are threatening to the proponents of the status quo and provide opportunities for those committed to change and innovation. All parties will therefore seek to mould and exploit emerging crises in ways that suit their interests.

With the stakes of crises so high, the very act of defining and interpreting them constitutes a crucial battleground for stakeholders in the political and policy struggles that crises invariably unleash. In this volume, we study how public leaders in nine jurisdictions engaged in such ‘framing contests’ and how their attempts to interpret the cascading events of the economic downturn were received in the media. The central question of this volume is: how did key heads of government, finance ministers and national bank presidents publicly interpret the severity, causes, responsibilities and policy implications of the emerging global economic downturn and how were their framing attempts received publicly?

In Australia, for example, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was conspicuously engaged in this politics of crisis exploitation. In an essay published in February 2009 in the magazine The Monthly, Rudd (2009) took the view: that the global economic downturn amounted to the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression of the 1930s; that it was caused in large part by speculation and greed, which were allowed to reign free by the laissez-faire approach to economic regulation propagated and institutionalised by proponents of ‘neo-liberalism’; that responsibility for the downturn should therefore rest with governments who allowed this to happen on their watch, in particular governments of the neo-liberal ilk (such as the government led by Rudd’s predecessor, John Howard) that actively aided and abetted a ‘let the market rule’ philosophy, the credibility of which had now entirely collapsed; and that Australia needed a paradigm shift away from neo-liberalism and towards a rejuvenated form of social democracy in which the State was no longer seen as part of the problem but rather as a pivotal part of the solution when it came to creating and sustaining prosperous and fair societies.

Rudd’s essay was also published in Le Monde and distributed among the participants of the 2009 G20 summit on the crisis. Within Australia, it was sharply criticised by the Liberal opposition and hotly debated in newspapers, the ‘blogosphere’ and subsequent issues of The Monthly. Whatever the intellectual merits of Rudd’s argument, his framing attempt no doubt shaped the terms of Australian public debate about the underlying causes and wider implications of the crisis (see further Chapter 9).

In this volume, we look at Rudd as well as many of his counterparts internationally. We also look at other key office-holders in economic crisis management, particularly treasurers/finance ministers and national bank governors. How did other heads of government and other key managers of the national economy frame the unfolding events? How did these frames seek to accomplish their political and policy aims in dealing with the crisis? How persuasive were their accounts believed to be by key media and public opinion at large?

Theoretically, this study sits at the intersection of the fields of political communication, leadership and crisis management. Understanding political elites through rhetorical analysis is a tried and tested genre in political science and has found itself a new lease on life in the age of television and the Internet (Edelman 1977; Tulis 1987; Hart 1989; Hinckley 1990; Gaffney 1991; Uhr 2002, 2003). We are also not the first to study the economic rhetoric of leaders—in times of crisis or otherwise (see Wood 2007). Many scholars of political rhetoric stress its significance in making or breaking leaders’ careers, as well as in influencing their effectiveness as agenda setters, legislators and policymakers, although there are indications that this influence should not be overstated (Edwards 2003; Canes-Wrone 2006; Curran 2004; Wood 2007:10–13). As described, the field of crisis management studies is vast and interdisciplinary, but studies that take a rhetorical perspective on it are few and far between in political science, though more common in business studies (cf. Bostdorff 1994; Kiewe 1994; Kuypers 1997; Fearn-Banks 2002; Millar and Heath 2003). The present study is, however, unique in examining the economic crisis rhetoric of leaders in the context of a broader, political theory of crisis leadership, which will be outlined in Chapter 2.