Polarized Federalism and Administrative Discretion in Disaster Aid Outcomes: Evidence from FEMA Public Assistance

• In Event: State Policy Variations in Disaster Governance: Analyzing the Role of Evidence, Emotions, Discretion, and Policy Windows

Abstract

Previous scholarship, especially in political economy, has mainly focused on the distribution of federal disaster assistance through the lens of the authorization stage, how presidential declarations affect aid allocation. Yet what happens after a disaster declaration has received less attention. Our study shifts analytical attention to the implementation stage of FEMA Public Assistance (PA), examining how intergovernmental politics under polarized federalism shapes program delivery outcomes through the mechanism of administrative discretion. We argue that political influence in disaster aid does not primarily operate through funding amounts (which are heavily constrained by objective damage assessments) but through the implementation progression. Administrative discretion, embedded in stages such as project formulation, review and approval, and fund obligation, provides the space through which political signals from polarized intergovernmental relationships penetrate program delivery. Using county-disaster observations, we construct a dataset drawn from FEMA PA Program Deliveries administrative records (2016–2025), merged with NOAA storm event damage data, American Community Survey socioeconomic indicators, and county-level presidential election returns, capturing both funding intensity and implementation progression outcomes, specifically, project completion rate (the share of applicants reaching the RTM stage) and project closeout rate (the share of applicants formally closed out).Our findings show that objective need is the strongest and most stable predictor of funding intensity, suggesting that the allocation stage is governed primarily by technical and administrative criteria. However, political influences are visible in the implementation progression. Electoral competitiveness is positively associated with project completion rates, which means that bureaucrats operating in electorally salient environments prioritize advancing projects in swing counties. State-federal partisan alignment is positively associated with project closeout rates, consistent with the expectation that cooperative intergovernmental relationships reduce administrative friction and accelerate formal project conclusion. This study advances scholarship on disaster policy and federal grant program implementation in several ways. Theoretically, it shifts attention away from the prevailing emphasis on presidential disaster declarations and shows that political influence in FEMA PA is narrower and more process-oriented than authorization-stage studies would suggest, appearing less in preferential resource allocation than in the pace and completion of implementation. It also identifies administrative discretion as the conduit through which polarized intergovernmental relationships shape program delivery, linking specific stages of the PA process to partisan cues embedded in contested state-federal relations. Empirically, the study introduces implementation progression outcomes as theoretically grounded measures that better capture the process-oriented nature of political influence. Practically, the findings suggest that evaluating disaster recovery requires greater attention to process transparency, the monitoring of implementation milestones, and the quality of intergovernmental coordination, not simply the distribution of obligated funds.

Authors

• Mengjie Long, Florida State University
  Presenting Author

• ZIYAO ZHU, Florida State University
  Non-Presenting Co-Author