Network Governance in Response to Acts of Terrorism : Comparative Analyses

High performance during catastrophic terrorist events require the ability to assess and adapt capacity rapidly, restore or enhance disrupted or inadequate communications, utilize flexible decision making swiftly, and expand coordination and trust between multiple emergency and crisis response agencies. These requirements are superimposed on conventional administrative systems that rely on relatively rigid plans, decision protocols, and formal relationships that assume smooth sailing and uninterrupted communications and coordination.

Network Governance in Response to Acts of Terrorism focuses on the inter-organizational performance and coordinated response to recent terrorist incidents across different national, legal, and cultural contexts in New York, Bali, Istanbul, Madrid, London, and Mumbai. Effortlessly combining each case study with content analyses of news reports from local and national newspapers, situation reports from government emergency/crisis management agencies, and, interviews with public managers, community leaders, and nonprofit executives involved in response operations, Naim Kapucu presents an overview of how different countries tackle emergencies by employing various collaborative decision-making processes, thus, offering a global perspective with different approaches. These features make this book an important read for both scholars and practitioners eager to reconcile existing decision-making theories with practice.

Naim Kapucu, Ph.D., is a Professor at the School of Public Administration at the University of Central Florida (UCF). He is also the founding director of the Center for Public and Nonprofit Management (CPNM) at UCF (2008-2011). He has developed Emergency Management and Homeland Security graduate certificate and undergraduate minor programs at UCF. He has also served as the Director for the Public Service and Leadership Program at the School of Public Administration from 2007 till 2009. He has published widely in areas of public policy and administration, crisis leadership, nonprofit management and disaster management. His work has been published in Public Administration Review, Administration & Society, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, the American Review of Public Administration, and Disasters. His main research interests are emergency and crisis management, network leadership and governance, decision-making in complex environments, and collaborative public management. He is the author of Collaborative Response to Acts of Terrorism: A Comparative Network Analysis in Dynamic Environments and Managing Emergencies and Crises (with Alp Ozerdem).