The Partial and Contested Construction of the State’s Role in Disaster Response

• In Event: Disasters, Crises and Responses in the 21st Century

Abstract

It is almost a truism at this point to say that disasters are socially constructed (eg Roberts, 2013; Rodriguez and Barnshaw, 2006; World Bank, 2010). Less attention has been given to the construction of the role of the State in disaster response. Conceptualization of this role remains partial, contested, and largely implicit, which has implications for the efficacy of the responses and leaves the sector open to appropriation by populists.
Disaster response is a fairly new policy area for national governments. In the US the parameters of this role have changed dramatically over the past two centuries (Steinberg, 2000). Tracing those changes shows that even at the national level, ideas about what the government should and should not be responsible for in a disaster response have continued to fluctuate significantly during the last two decades. The lack of a formal definition has not been mitigated by an informal, unspoken consensus, and values continue to shift.
This paper uses interview and documentary data from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to show how, in the absence of a national consensus about the State’s responsibility after a catastrophe, local governments and sometimes individuals constructed their own definitions of disaster governance. Decisions about the limits of the State role varied between neighboring jurisdictions. Unelected staff with no disaster experience, and sometimes volunteers, were left making decisions about who would and who wouldn’t receive assistance, while national agency staff made statements about the responsibility without basis in law or policy. Meanwhile Schneider (2008) has shown that public opinion on disaster responsibility was relatively close to the relatively vague legal framework, while differing substantially from the perspective of public officials.
The lack of consensus on the purpose of and limits to government responsibility open a space for additional manipulation of the event. Public political statements, along with the official government reports on the disaster (and, for that matter, academic work), were able to claim failure (or, in rare cases, success) from different angles. The incomplete definition of the public policy area allowed for (and, in more recent examples, continues to allow for) populist (and other) appropriation of the disaster response. Such appropriations continue to push government approaches to disaster response in different directions, impacting planning, organizational continuity, and the consistency of decision-making across local jurisdictions.



References

Roberts, Patrick S. Disasters and the American State: How Politicians, Bureaucrats, and the Public Prepare for the Unexpected. Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Rodríguez, Havidán, and John Barnshaw. “The Social Construction of Disasters: From Heat Waves to Worst-Case Scenarios.” Contemporary Sociology, vol. 35, no. 3, 2006, pp. 218–223. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30045787.

Schneider, Saundra. “Who’s to Blame? (Mis) perceptions of the Intergovernmental Response to Disasters” Publius: The Journal of Federalism volume 38 number 4, 2008, pp. 715-738

Steinberg, Ted. Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America. Oxford University Press, 2000.

World Bank. “Natural Hazards, UnNatural Disasters: The Economics of Effective Prevention.” 2010.

Author

• Malka Older, Sciences Po Paris