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  1. Home
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  3. Disasters and the American State
  • Cited by 33
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
November 2013
Print publication year:
2013
Online ISBN:
9781139198875
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139198875
Subjects:
Area Studies, American Studies, American Government, Politics and Policy, Politics and International Relations
Information

Book description

Disasters and the American State offers a thesis about the trajectory of federal government involvement in preparing for disaster shaped by contingent events. Politicians and bureaucrats claim credit for the government's successes in preparing for and responding to disaster, and they are also blamed for failures outside of government's control. New interventions have created precedents and established organizations and administrative cultures that accumulated over time and produced a general trend in which citizens, politicians and bureaucrats expect the government to provide more security from more kinds of disasters. The trend reached its peak when the Federal Emergency Management Agency adopted the idea of preparing for 'all hazards' as its mantra. Despite the rhetoric, however, the federal government's increasingly bold claims and heightened public expectations are disproportionate to the ability of the federal government to prevent or reduce the damage caused by disaster.

Reviews

'[Roberts] has immersed himself with admirable thoroughness in the tangled story of how the federal government came to be the lead actor when disaster strikes. Above all, he develops a thoroughly persuasive historical and institutional explanation for how FEMA came to be a byword for bureaucratic incompetence - first, at the turn of the 1990s, then, more spectacularly, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.'

Gareth Davies Source: The Forum

'Roberts’ balanced handling of the much misunderstood response to Katrina is magisterial … This is not only a powerfully argued, relentlessly fair account of the troubles that plague the federal management of disaster, but also an edifying comment on the limits any modern democracy faces in acting swiftly and effectively.'

Source: Kirkus Reviews

'… a thoroughly persuasive account of the long and uneven development of what he calls the American 'disaster state'. Roberts’ fundamental goal is to help us understand contemporary disaster politics, including how past politics and institutions have given rise to these politics. He draws on insights from the literature on American political development to provide us with this account, which emphasizes the role of historical patterns as well as idiosyncrasies in creating these politics, and their roles in shaping the American state. The book is very well written, provocative, and well researched. Anyone interested in American political development should find it compelling, and of course, disaster scholars may be especially interested.'

Logan Strother Source: Disaster, Property and Politics blog (disasterspropertypolitics.com)

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