Disasters and the American State by Patrick S. Roberts
How Politicians, Bureaucrats, and the Public Prepare for the Unexpected
About Disasters and the American State:
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, ranging from fires and floods to tornados and hurricanes. The trend reached its peak when the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) 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 disasters.
Praise for Disasters and the American State:
"Professor Patrick S. Roberts has written an informative and sometimes provocative text raising issues about the complexity of the American disaster system and the challenges for creating a disaster-resilient nation. It is clear that this is not just an academic treatise. It provides a contextual format for young professionals entering the emergency management field as to the difficulties they will face. For the experienced emergency manager it is a 'milepost marker' to help understand how we arrived at this point in our history and their own role in shaping the future of the American disaster experience." - Eric E. Holdeman, Columnist, Emergency Management Magazine, Blogger, Disaster-Zone
"In this lively book, Roberts lays out the fascinating history of government's growing role in dealing with disasters. His analysis of the change from a government in transition - from responding to events to trying to manage them - is a tremendously important and pathbreaking contribution to a question that increasingly, and inevitably, demands the best thinking we can bring. Roberts has done just that." - Donald F. Kettl, Dean, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland
"How did the United States end up with the unwieldy homeland security apparatus it finds itself with today? Professor Roberts's masterly account of the development of disaster politics provides the definitive answer. Historically detailed, theoretically rich, and eminently readable, Disasters and the American State traces the social construction of the idea of disaster and the state's role in response. It is an important contribution for anyone interested not just in disaster, but more broadly in the historical development of the American state." - Donald Moynihan, Professor of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin-Madison