Dealing with Disaster: Public Capacities for Crisis and Contingency Management (IIAS Public Governance Series)

Disasters disrupt communities across the World, whether resulting from natural forces, major transportation or industrial accidents, or public health emergencies. They can be compounded by wicked problems such as Climate change. When they occur, disasters can cause major loss of life and property and massive disruption of daily routines. They do not respect social, economic or political boundaries. They affect all societies, but their effects can be particularly devastating in developing countries.Governments are invariably drawn into responding to major disasters, but how they respond can make a crucial difference to a disaster’s immediate effects and its longer-term impact. Each national system of governance and public administration is unique, as is the combination of natural and human-conditioned hazards that it faces. Every government, however, requires an effective ability to learn and apply lessons from past events. They must also be able to anticipate and respond to future events. The capacity of public sector governance and administrative institutions can make a crucial difference to what happens in any given situation and to community and government resilience in the longer run.Dealing with Disaster offers insights into how to study and manage hazards in our societies at risk and in turn how to respond when hazards turn into disasters. Its four sections address theoretical and cross-cutting issues, the international dimensions of disaster response, case studies of national crisis management agencies, and case studies of disaster events. “Bringing together 29 experts from 12 countries around the world, this book provides both academic and practitioner perspectives on crisis and disaster management in a comparative context. This book is a must read for students, academic scholars, policy makers, and public managers interested in understanding crisis and disaster management.” Pan Suk Kim, International Director (American Society for Public Administration), Public Administration Professor (Yonsei University), former Minister and IIAS PresidentDavid C.G. Brown is Adjunct Professor in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. He was senior Canadian public servant, President of the IIAS, and Rapporteur of IIAS Project Group on Safety and Security.Jacek Czaputowicz is Professor at the University of Warsaw. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland, and Chair of the IIAS Project Group on Safety and Security. The International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IIAS) is a learned society in public administration established in 1930 and headquartered in Brussels. The Public Governance Series aims at diffusing the scientific knowledge it produces.