The Evolution of Homeland Security Law and Policy

• In Event: Homeland Security Politics and Policy

Abstract

Patrick Roberts, Associate Professor at Virginia Tech, will present “Institutional Crisis in FEMA and Emergency Management After 2006.” This paper represents an extension of his book, Disasters and the American State: How Politicians, Bureaucrats, and the Public Prepare for the Unexpected (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Specifically, Roberts discusses what is necessary to effect major bureaucratic reform after a crisis, given that these events can instead produce protracted failure or cycles of reform, churn, and disequilibria. Although Congress passed the Post-Katrina Reform Act, this legislation did not address the fact that FEMA operated in a weakly institutionalized environment, leaving it subject to encroachment by people and organizations with different agendas. For instance, FEMA’s placement within DHS made it subject to DHS’s security and immigration priorities. FEMA’s trajectory after Katrina was thus determined more by its bureaucratic environment than by the nature of reform efforts or by its mission.

Author

• Patrick S. Roberts, RAND Corporation