University of Lapland

The COVID-19 pandemic revived longstanding claims that democratic governance limits rapid and effective crisis response. While authoritarian regimes are often credited with institutional agility derived from centralized authority and coercive capacity, democracies must operate through accountability, legal constraint, and public consent. This paper argues that the missing link in explaining democratic crisis performance is political trust. Specifically, it theorizes political trust as a mediating mechanism between democratic institutional structures and crisis governance outcomes. Distinguishing between diffuse trust in democracy as a regime type and issue-specific trust in crisis management, the paper demonstrates that high levels of generalized regime trust are not a necessary condition for democratic agility. Rather, domain-specific trust in governmental competence and intentions during emergencies can generate voluntary compliance that substitutes for coercion. Using a case study of Ghana's COVID-19 response, the analysis shows how crisis-specific trust enabled swift policy implementation, widespread public adherence to restrictions, and the preservation of democratic norms. The findings refine debates on regime type and crisis governance by demonstrating that democratic agility is conditional and mediated by trust, rather than structurally determined by institutional form. By foregrounding political trust as a functional governance resource, the paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how democracies can act decisively in emergencies while maintaining constitutional integrity.

Interdisciplinary research approaches are critical to understanding the profound shifts in glacial and periglacial environments due to climate change. However, conducting fieldwork in these geographies often involves navigating the complexities of situated narratives, traditionally dominated by masculinist and geoscience-centered approaches. In this commentary, using feminist glaciology as a lens for understanding the socio-environmental dynamics within the cryosphere, we reflect on the significance of interdisciplinary and cross-boundary research. Drawing from three different yet interconnected fieldwork experiences—nature-based tourism research in Patagonia, geophysical surveys in High Mountain Asia, and engaging with the green transition and indigenous perspectives in the European Arctic—we explore the challenges and solutions of doing research in these extreme environments while reflecting on positionality, knowledge production, and the need for diverse perspectives in the climate crisis.

This article focus on features of Sami language instruction in the first grades in Norway and Finland. The most important part of the paper is to compare instruction methods in Norway and Finland – what kind of differences exist between these countries on an ideological level with regard to language instruction. Secondly, the paper outlines the challenges of Sami language instruction in the first grades as an indigenous peoples’ language with minority language status. This presents its own differences and challenges which must be taken into account on the planning level and in practice in a working classroom. Sami language instruction occurs within a challenging environment. Student groups are more heterogenic than ever. Teachers must work within a situation which is quite different in relation to the language situa­tion in the country as a whole. The situation of the Sami language differs markedly from that of the languages of the nation states in question and there is a pressing need for more research in this area.

Basal friction is one of the most uncertain processes in ice-sheet models used to project future sea level rise, yet friction parameters remain poorly constrained by observations. Here, we present the Greenland Ice Sheet Ensemble Friction Inversion (GrISEFI), a dataset quantifying basal shear stress and its uncertainty at the Greenland scale using an ensemble approach to inverse methods. This ensemble accounts for uncertainties in ice rheology, friction exponents, regularization parameters, and velocity observations, generating 40 plausible friction states rather than a single deterministic solution. Our spatially-resolved basal shear stress fields reveal systematic patterns controlled by bed geometry and surface mass balance: low values occur within ablation area for bed below sea level, while elevated values characterize regions upstream of the melt limit. Analysis of flow-lines and cross-sections of different Greenland Ice sheet glaciers (land-terminating, tidewater, and ice-shelf glaciers) demonstrates that spatial variations in basal shear stress are primarily controlled by effective pressure changes, validating the importance of subglacial hydrology in friction parameterization. We show that effective pressure parameterizations based on distance from the terminus and melt onset better capture tidewater glacier behavior than commonly-used height-above-flotation approaches. Constraining friction parameters through our ensemble, we find that basal shear stress exhibits substantially weaker velocity dependence than commonly assumed in ice-sheet models, challenging widespread modeling assumptions. These findings have direct implications for how models represent the coupling between basal processes and ice dynamics in future sea level projections.

The purpose of this study is to describe and understand the experiences of front-line managers in elderly care as regards digital change processes and the leadership skills required of them, as well as the perceived need for leadership support. The study is positioned at the interface between scientific discussions on human resource management and change process management. It focuses on the discussion related to the increasing digitalisation practices of healthcare work communities from the perspective of front-line managers in elderly care. The context of the study is leadership in change processes according to Weicks’ Critical Sensemaking Model. The data for this qualitative study were collected through thematic interviews with front-line managers in elderly care (N = 14) in healthcare and social welfare organisations and were analysed using theory-bound content analysis. In leading the collaborative digital change process, the features of the Critical Sensemaking Model are combined with the interactional, cultural, environmental, change and human resource management and digital competence development factors of the front-line manager’s work community. The implementation of the digital change process requires knowledge of a sense of community on the part of the front-line manager's leadership, which manifests itself in different ways as communal learning, competence, leadership support, implementation of cultural change needs, dynamics of digital change, responding to the requirements of the operating environment and maintaining readiness for change. The dynamics of the digital change process include the management of the functional aspects of change management, emotions and attitudes in human resource management, and the development of change expertise over time. In the social learning of the work community, interaction between front-line managers and employees is emphasized. The Critical Sensemaking Model can promote the development of cultural change in leadership and work communities. It helps to form a mutual understanding of the needs of the organisation's management and work communities for positive change, learning and sharing of competence, as well as following the clues and development trends of internal and external working environment. Therefore, maintaining the readiness for changes of the digital working methods requires identifying and managing sensible events in past, present, and future.

<strong class="journal-contentHeaderColor">Abstract.</strong> This study investigates the temporal and spatial variability of physical snow properties during the melting period in taiga snowpack conditions in Sodankyl&auml;, northern Finland. Weekly snow pit measurements &ndash; including stratigraphy, temperature, and density &ndash; were conducted at four locations over an eight-week period from March to May in 2023 to assess landscape-scale variability. At three sites, the average spatial variability of automatically measured snow height over time was 7.4 cm (9.7 %). Density measurements using the snow water equivalent tube showed higher spatial variability compared to those made with a density cutter, and this variability increased during melt. Differences between measurement techniques exceeded differences between locations. Peaks in density profiles were mainly linked to melt-freeze crusts and ice layers. Depth hoar was consistently found in lower snowpack layers before melting, reaching a maximum relative height of 21.5 %. The appearance of melt-freeze crusts following short-term temperature shifts highlights the snowpack's sensitivity to daily thermal cycles. Initial wetness was observed mid-snowpack, suggesting that refreezing from cold nights operates top-down, not affecting the full depth. Moist and wet layers became more prevalent in the upper snowpack, while the wettest layers accumulated at the base rather than being evenly distributed.