06D1-00-Examine the Hurricane Katrina Case Study

e-governance and I daresay governance. If it is not already on your bookshelf, it should be. Sanjay K. Pandey University of Kansas, USA Thomas A. Birkland Lessons of Disaster: Policy Change after Catastrophic Events Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2006 ISBN 978-1-58901-121-2 After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, we know that the public increasingly expects better public sector leadership before, during, and after catastrophic disasters and extreme events than it has seen in the past. High standards of responsiveness and ubiquitous media coverage compel political leaders and administrative heads to coordinate resources effectively. The massive numbers of public, nonpro t, and private organizations involved in catastrophic disasters require extensive ability to have horizontal, as well as vertical, communication and decision making. Catastrophic disasters are characterized by their unexpected or unusual size, disruptions to the communication and decision making capabilities of the emergency response system itself, and an initial breakdown in coordination and communication.

Therefore, high performance in managing catastrophic disasters requires an ability to assess and adapt capacity rapidly, restore or enhance disrupted or inadequate communications, utilize uncharacteristically exible decision making, and expand coordination and trust of emergency response agencies despite the hurly-burly of the response/recovery efforts. Learning from previous disaster experiences politically and practically is very important.

Lessons of Disasteris a follow-up to the author’s previous book,After Disaster(Birkland 1997), which examined the extent to which disasters as ‘‘focusing events’’ in uence policy agendas within relevant policy domains.Lessons of Disasteris built on the analytical framework developed in his previous work with more emphasis on whether or not sudden events, as focusing events, cause or encourage policy learning. According to the author sudden events include: accidents, natural disasters, and man-made disasters, such as terrorist attacks. The author uses the termfocusing eventswhich was widely used by students of public policy (Birkland 1997; Kingdon 1995). The author emphasizes the importance of interaction between the ‘event,’ the nature of the event, community actors interested in the issue, and the problems caused by disasters. The author explains understanding policy changes as learning from disasters in the policy process. The author points out that catastrophes and extreme events ‘‘are most likely to gain the greatest attention and therefore are the events most likely to trigger policy change (p. 4). Book Reviews 153 The rst chapter of the book develops the analytical framework used throughout the book ( gures 1 and 2, p. 18). The author distinguishes four different types of learning:

government learning, instrumental learning, social learning, and political learning.

Learning is used as a metaphor organizations learn through their individual members.

The author differentiates between simple policy change and actual policy learning by de ning learning as a process by which policy actors incorporate new information and insights revealed by a disaster and purposefully apply it to the design of more appropriate or effective policies. The author uses the de nition of learning as ‘‘a process in which individuals apply new information and ideas to policy decisions’’ adapted from Busenberg (2001: 22). The key research question of the book is: ‘‘Are the organizations in policy communities able and prepared to learn from disasters, and to what extent?’’ (p. 11). The author uses ‘‘proposed and enacted legislation regulations as evidence of policy change’’ (p. 25) and an evidence of policy learning. Data for the research comes from Lexis Nexis online database of Congressional Information Service index, The New York Times news report, and local news reports.

The book uses the traditional perspective on disasters, natural and man-made, and focuses on four types of disasters. The book uses four cases two example for each type:

September 11 terrorist attacks and aviation security breaches with fatal outcomes as example for man-made or ‘‘humanly caused’’ disasters and earthquakes and hurricanes as examples of natural disasters. Based on these cases, the book explores ‘‘whether and to what extent the increased attention that follows disasters leads policy makers to de ne problems and adopt new policies to address them’’ (p. 30).

In an analysis of the September 11 case, the author concludes that ‘‘[t]he September 11 attacks were the historical turning point in policy change relating to homeland security and triggered a period of instrumental and social policy change (p. 57). But it was the existence of many ideas related to homeland security among experts and policy before 9/11 ‘‘made the adoption of new policy instruments much easier’’ (p. 60). In analyses of the aviation security, the author concludes that learning occurred after all major aviation disasters. He also emphasizes that ‘‘September 11 is clearly the event that triggered the most learning and the most change’’ (p. 93). All four types of learning occurred after the disasters but instrumental learning was the most obvious one.

The author focuses on hurricanes in Florida and North Carolina, and earthquakes in Washington and California, as examples of natural disasters in chapter four. The author differentiates learning between natural disasters and man-made disasters and nds that man-made disasters triggered more learning and change than natural disasters. Humanly caused disasters are considered in the domain of Federal Government and natural disasters are more of local and state governments’ responsibilities. Among the natural disasters, earthquakes cause more learning than hurricanes. Mitigation is the book’s focus in learning from natural disasters. (Other three traditional aspects of disaster management – preparedness, response, and recovery, can also be discussed in learning).

In this section, the author discusses local and state level learning from natural disasters.

‘‘Learning in the eld of natural hazards is a function of experience, both in the actions 154 Public Management Review of professionals whose training and expertise compel their involvement in policy making and in political leaders who weigh the political costs and bene ts of applying lessons to actual policy’’ (p. 156).

The author touches brie y on the Hurricane Katrina case. That case might impact several assumptions used in the book for the impact of catastrophic natural disasters as triggering event for policy learning and change. Changes made in the Federal Response Plan after 9/11 and changes that will be made in the National Response Plan and National Incident Management System after Katrina, are also interesting instrumental learning examples that should be discussed in detail. The book is a great read for graduate and upper undergraduate policy courses.

REFERENCES Birkland, T. (1997)After Disaster: Agenda Setting, Public Policy, and Focusing Events, Washington, DC: Georgetown Press.

Busenberg, G. J. (2001) Learning in organizations and public policy,Journal of Public Policy. 21: 2 pp173 – 89.

Kingdon, J. (1995)Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies(2nd edn.), New York: Harper Collins. Naim Kapucu University of Central Florida, FL, USA Robert F. Durant The Greening of the U.S. Military: Environmental Policy, National Security, and Organizational Change Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2007 ISBN 978-1-58901-153-3 In the undercurrent of recent policy pressures dominated by persistent violence and tensions in the Middle East, the stress of thwarting terrorist attacks, and the din of ecological catastrophes drawing near due to climate change, lays an organization in the eddy of these colliding forces – the U.S. military. The U.S. Department of Defense with its primary mission of national security has been the subject of a halted and patchwork attempt at embracing an organizational ethos that acknowledges environmental protection, pollution prevention, and conservation as vital to its ultimate mission of protecting the United States. The Greening of the U.S. Military is a vibrant documentation and analysis of the motivations, strategies, and results of the attempt to alter cultural perceptions within the largest public sector organization in the United States. More importantly, the book offers a theoretical framework for understanding large-scale organizational change in public organizations.

The Greening of the U.S. Military is the rst exhaustive historical account of the how the U.S. Department of Defense skirted, countered, and even adopted environmental Book Reviews 155