Navigating the Pandemic: Coordination and Communication in Small Czech Municipalities

The chapter examines how small Czech municipalities navigated the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on coordination, communication and crisis governance in a highly fragmented local government system. Drawing on national crisis legislation, epidemiological data on incidence by municipal size, and 24 semi-structured interviews with mayors of municipalities under 2,000 inhabitants, it analyses both the structural context and local actors' perceptions and practices. The findings show that the early phase of the pandemic was marked by uncertainty, information overload and inconsistent, legalistic communication from higher tiers of government, which often reached mayors later than media reports and did not account for the specific capacities of very small municipalities. In this context, mayors increasingly relied on their own judgement, horizontal networks with neighbouring municipalities and voluntary associations, and intensive, multi-channel communication with residents. Small municipalities compensated for limited administrative staff through dense local social ties and volunteer infrastructures, especially volunteer fire brigades, and by supporting schools and vulnerable groups through ad hoc service innovations. The chapter argues that these local responses strengthened the robustness of crisis management "from below", but also exposed a persistent national tendency to treat municipalities as a homogeneous category, ignoring size-related differences in resources and needs.