Transboundary crises: critical challenges for contemporary government

After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and large areas of Louisiana and Mississippi in late August 2005, the response at the different levels of government failed miserably. Despite national efforts to improve the crisis response structure in the USA in the aftermath of 9/11, the response to this announced disaster was characterised by an eerily familiar set of pathologies.

These shortcomings are not unique to the southern regions of the United States. The response to the Chicago heatwave, 9/11 attacks, the anthrax scare and the Beltway snipers was not without problems. In Europe, the United Kingdom failed to deal effectively with the BSE outbreak in 1996; the Dutch government produced a fumbled response after the assassination of Pim Fortuyn; the French reacted poorly to the 2003 heatwave (Lagadec 2004) and the Swedish government failed miserably in the wake of the December 2004 tsunami (Brandström et al. 2008; Swedish Tsunami Commission 2005).

The worst may be yet to come. Potentially devastating crises loom on the horizon (Clarke 2005; Posner 2004; Rosenthal et al. 2001). The challenge for societies and government agencies worldwide is twofold. First, societies will have to prevent as many of these crises as is feasible. Second, governments will have to design a response system that can effectively cope with large-scale crises and disasters without undermining the normal, everyday functioning of government (cf. Briault, Macrae, Jennings and Lodge, this volume).