Politics & Power Quote by Harri Holkeri

Crisis doesn’t just break systems; it breaks belief. Holkeri’s line is blunt about the real battlefield in national and international emergencies: confidence. Not the feel-good kind, but the hard civic substrate that makes rationing possible, keeps banks from facing runs, keeps alliances from fraying, and persuades citizens that sacrifice isn’t a sucker’s game.

The phrasing has a technocrat’s candor. “There are always questions of lack of confidence” treats panic and skepticism as recurring policy variables, not moral failures. That’s a very late-20th-century Nordic insight: governance is less about thunderous proclamations than about maintaining legitimacy in a media environment where rumors travel faster than relief efforts. Holkeri, a Finnish prime minister who navigated recession and shifting European realities, understood that crises accelerate doubt: people start auditing institutions in real time. Every delay looks like deceit; every expert sounds captured.

Then comes the subtle provocation: “You have to change the minds of the people in order to get results.” He’s not describing spin as a vanity project; he’s describing consent as infrastructure. Results require compliance, patience, and coordinated behavior, none of which can be commanded sustainably in a democracy. The subtext is also slightly unsettling: if outcomes depend on “changing minds,” leaders will be tempted to treat public opinion as a lever to pull rather than a judgment to respect. In that tension - persuasion versus manipulation - sits the modern crisis state, where communication strategy can be as consequential as the policy itself.