Designing Resilience: Preparing for Extreme Events

7. Designing Resilience Leadership Challenges in Complex Administrative Systems

129 7 Designing Resilience Leadership Challenges in Complex Administrative Systems Arjen Boin Catastrophes and the Inherent Limitations of Crisis Management It is widely perceived, in both academic and practitioner circles, that largescale systems have become increasingly vulnerable to catastrophic breakdowns (Clarke 1999; Rosenthal, Boin, and Comfort 2001b; Quarantelli, Lagadec, and Boin 2006; Perrow 2007). New threats with destructive potential —think of climate change, technological revolutions, and evolving forms of terrorism—have emerged on the horizon (OECD 2003; Clarke 2006; Flynn 2007). As critical infrastructure systems have become increasingly complex and integrated, relatively small disturbances can rapidly escalate into compound crises (Turner 1978; Perrow 1984). In addition, modern societies face transboundary threats and crises, which play out at large scales and across traditional policy boundaries. Crisis management—especially early warnings and effective interventions —is thus perceived to be of the utmost importance. Societies must be prepared to deal with the impact of transboundary crises and disasters. Inadequate crisis management processes and structures can have enormous consequences. The response to Hurricane Katrina underscores the importance of crisis management. In the wake of Katrina, emergency services did not reach all victims in time, the New Orleans city administration could not take care of its surviving population, police forces lost control over the city, state assistance did not materialize in time, the Federal Emergency Management 130 Arjen Boin Agency (FEMA) sat on its hands, and President George W. Bush appeared slow to step in and assume command. The response system, in other words, broke down. As a result, people suffered and lost trust in their government. Hurricane Katrina exposed a deep truth about the inherent limitations of crisis management in case of catastrophes. This tragic episode, along with the Sumatran earthquake and tsunami in 2004, demonstrated that disaster plans are easily rendered irrelevant by a catastrophe (Clarke 1999); that traditional top-down, command-and-control systems do not work in these situations; and that leaders often fail to understand the dynamics of crisis. Hurricane Katrina serves as a reminder of the many unforeseen and impossible challenges that large-scale crises pose to the response system and the political-administrative elites who govern it. Catastrophes also pose an intriguing challenge to the research community . If we accept, as many crisis and disaster scholars seem to do, that prevention and planning strategies cannot fully protect modern society from each and every catastrophe, society must be better prepared to respond to, deal with, and recover from these damaging events (Wildavsky 1988; Longstaff 2005). It must, in other words, build resilient response systems. The big question, then, is whether and how resilience can be engineered into the response systems of large-scale entities such as the United States and the European Union. This chapter contemplates both questions. In doing so, it draws from a variety of sources, including disaster and crisis research , public administration, political science, sociology, psychology, and organization theory. The aim of this chapter is to see if the “laws” that are thought to govern crisis dynamics can give rise to useful prescriptions for the future (re)designers of public response systems who seek to make their societies more resilient in the face of impending catastrophes. It begins by sketching the state of the art when it comes to understanding government responses to catastrophes. It then outlines the challenges that catastrophes pose to public leaders and sketches the contours of a resilient response system, identifying policy and administrative tools that are feasible and effective. Defining Adversity Before we consider the state of preparedness of modern societies, we should clarify what exactly societies should prepare for (after all, societies face very different types of threats). It is helpful in this respect to distinguish among routine, nonroutine, and catastrophic forms of adversity. An emergency is a serious yet fairly routine event: it is a complex and urgent problem, but Designing Resilience 131 emergency services are usually trained to deal with such events. The details of the situation may be new to them, but emergency workers should have a good idea what should be done and how it should be accomplished. Examples include the sinking of a passenger boat in the Adirondacks and the explosion of a bus during the evacuation preceding Hurricane Rita. These events are a tragedy for those involved. But emergencies are bound in place, have no ripple effects, and are rapidly brought to closure. A crisis poses more complex challenges as it entails...