Swimming against the Tide: How Disaster Agencies Build Political Resilience

Abstract

Despite the pressure on politicians to show leadership in times of disaster, many struggle with the extreme leadership challenges imposed by a calamity that is quickly consuming life and property. Drawing on data from elite interviews with senior personnel from disaster agencies in eight countries, we find that emergency managers want to engage with political actors well before a disaster strikes. This is critical to educate the political actor about disaster management, leadership, and communication, and to generate support for resources and funding. The challenge is to place disasters on the agenda of political actors ahead of all-consuming, day-to-day issues.

Governance quality, administrative values and disaster risk management

“…Consider the situation in the USA dealing with the executive orders constraining immigration by the former President Donald Trump: many people would rate governance to be quite poor, despite the effectiveness of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to deport individuals. While we cannot dismiss the political aspects of DRM (Ewart and McLean, 2017), it does lend itself to less contentious evaluation insofar as disasters – at least those stemming from natural hazards – do not normally have a party allegiance. This research proceeds by positing that DRM governance is primarily apolitical (or is intended to be so), and the variables involved on both sides of the equation are taken to be similarly devoid of normative agendas.…”