ABSTRACT
The chapter takes as its starting point the often-articulated expectation that ‘crises’ do have some learning effects so that one can hope with some justification that, for example, the rather successful fight against the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrates the potential capacity of states to come to terms with other crises as well, i.e. the crisis of climate change or the political and military crisis in Western and Central Europe that started with the Russian attack on Ukraine. The chapter raises some doubts as to whether solutions to one ‘emergency’ or crisis also foreshadow or anticipate solutions to other ones. Before discussing the cases just mentioned it is necessary, however, to reflect on the term ‘crisis’ which is too often used rather carelessly not only within a wider public but also within the social sciences. As will be shown by referring to arguments which have mostly been developed within the discipline of history, ‘crisis talk’ is a rather difficult matter since it is almost never possible to state by objective measures whether there is a crisis or not. That means, of course, that using the word ‘crisis’ is most of the time not much more that a rhetorical device to point to the complexities of a problem. Taking this into account, it becomes clear that it is the specific perception of a problem, i.e. a subjective factor, that triggers the crisis rhetoric or makes it acceptable and thus often leads to very different responses by state actors toward such a ‘crisis’.
