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Risk, Government Assumption of

The fundamental issue concerning government's role in disaster is a question of responsibility. If the role of disaster mitigation falls squarely on the shoulders of the federal government, there remains the question of who then directs state and local governments, as well as private enterprises, additionally providing the necessary resources for such a large-scale mitigation effort. Such a plan must be examined for its feasibility. It has also been posited that the role of the federal government is to serve as more of a supervisory and regulatory role, and the onus of mitigation is to be placed on state governments and private enterprises. Others suggest there should be no centralized role at all.

The Federalist Approach

Advocates of a federalist approach to the government's role in disaster mitigation argue that state and local agencies are best equipped to respond to disasters in their own area. This approach places emphasis on the fact that local knowledge of an area necessarily supersedes that of an intervening agency, and given local conditions such as geography, culture, governance, politics, and language, local communities and governments have the most relevant expertise during a disaster. Additionally, local public safety officials are already equipped with many of the resources necessary to provide disaster mitigation. There is also the question of proximity; external resources need to be mobilized, sometimes thousands of miles, in order to respond to a local disaster event.

As was the case with the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) response during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, a large federal effort at disaster mitigation can perpetuate, rather than mitigate disaster, with devastating consequences for government and civilians. Finally, there is a question of self-reliance and grassroots mobilization; if the onus of disaster mitigation lay squarely on national government, this would potentially give little incentive toward preparedness on the part of local populations, with equally devastating consequences as a botched national effort at remediation.

Market State, Not Market System

This is not to suggest that the federal government should play no role at all in formulating a response to risk. A federalist approach tends to go hand-in-hand ideologically with a strongly capitalist approach. There is usually a set of principles based in economic reasoning along the lines of laissez-faire, meaning that individuals are best left to sort things out for themselves, and the market is the venue in which they perform this balancing act. Such a market system, as described by Yale political science and economics professor Charles Lindblom, is a condition in which the bureaucracy of the state subscribes to the principles of the unfettered market at every level, leaving vital policymaking and enforcement decisions in the hands of corporations and individuals. The effects have the potential to be disastrous, argues Lindblom, as the reasoning of individuals in a market context (for competition and profit) are not a suitable basis for the relations between a government and its citizenry. Lindblom does not suggest removing the role of markets altogether, or otherwise curtailing their appropriate use; he simply claims that the market-based perception of risk is radically different from an appropriate, state-based perception of risk.

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