Crisis and Emergency Management

Theory and Practice, Second Edition

Ali Farazmand

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351570572
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Infrastruktur

More than 12 years have passed since the publication of the first edition of Crisis and Emergency Management. During that time numerous disasters—from 9/11 to massive earthquakes in Iran and China, to the giant Asian Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and the Fukushima Tsunami and ensuing nuclear meltdown—have changed the way we manage catastrophic events. With contributions from leading experts, this second edition features 40 new chapters that address recent worldwide crises and what we have learned from emergency responses to them.

See What's New in the Second Edition:

• 
  
  

• Up-to-date concepts, theories, and practices
• Analysis of recent disasters and their effect on emergency management
• Policy and managerial lessons
• Suggestions for capacity building in crisis and emergency management

The book covers a wide range of international issues using critical, empirical, and quantitative analyses. It discusses various approaches to topics such as resolving political tension and terrorism issues, the potential use of biological weapons, and the role of public relations in crisis. The author offers insight into organizational and community resiliency development; a "surprise management" theory in practice for upgrading the knowledge and skills in managing crises and governing emergencies; and better and more effective organizational, political, social, and managerial coordination in the processes. He presents case studies that enhance and advance the future theory and practice of crisis and emergency management, while at the same time providing practical advice that can be put to use immediately.

Managing crises and governing emergencies in such an age of challenges demands a different kind of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that were not available yesterday. This book gives you valuable information with applications at the macro, micro, organizational, and interorganizational levels, preparing you for emergency management in an increasingly globalized and uncertain world.

Chapter 1

Crisis and Emergency Management

Theory and Practice

Ali Farazmand

Contents

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Nature of Crises

1.3 Characteristics of Crises

1.4 Plan of the Book

References

1.1 Introduction

The world in the new millennium has faced massive wars and conflicts, tremendous uncertainties, chaotic changes, and significant crises of all kinds with various degrees of intensity that impose urgency and call for emergency management around the globe. It seems that the world has begun an age of unreason, in which all order is turned upside down. Governmental reports declare nation-states to be at major risk of losing territorial sovereignty and control of their independence in the age of globalization of capital and markets. The political—military power of the predatory globalization and global capitalism that transcends national boundaries has been defying conventional demarcation of statehood, as well as popular democratic ideals, broken the world peace, violated international laws, and put the world on the brink of a possible third world war with the threat of nuclear armageddon (Ohmae 1990, 1995; Korten 1995; Farazmand 1999, 2012).

The rise of globalization of capital and its negative consequences for both developing and more developed nations of the industrialized West has produced several concerns that embrace economics, environmental ecology, labor, culture, traditions, governance, administration, and politics. Energized by technological innovations, globalization has produced some positive effects, such as bringing more markets and products to consumers with money and facilitating communication and travel among peoples and professionals around the globe. But, it has also caused many devastating adverse consequences worldwide—increasing child labor, slave labor, wage slavery, environmental degradation, violation of human rights, loss of control over national and local resources, loss of democratic rights of citizens to make independent decisions, and imposing powerlessness in the face of globalizing finance capital backed by the most powerful (and potentially deadly militarily) states—the United States and its European allies. Today, predatory globalization has established a firm grip on nation-states’ sovereignties, forced most governments to take austerity measures at the expense of working and middle class people worldwide, and imposed virtual slavery for billions. The new barons of the global village—as characterized by proponents of predatory globalization—have been trying to flatten the world with the ideology and practice of market supremacy and advocating corporate structure as the ideal organization for governance and administration (see Farazmand 2012 for more on this).

With the fall of the USSR—the only socialist superpower capable of checking the excesses of global capitalism and its hegemonic state, the United States—has come an exacerbation of the multidimensional crises facing peoples, nation-states, governments, and cultures under globalization. Under the one-world ideological system of capitalism and market-oriented and corporate elite-based governance, conflicts and crises are suppressed—at least on the surface, voices of opposition and protest are silenced, and alternative forms of governance and socioeconomic order are crushed by military and other coercive forces, all in the name of a self-proclaimed ideology of market supremacy and capitalist democracy in which the wealthy and corporate elites rule (Korten 1995; Farazmand 1999). Crises are now being transformed into opportunities for further accumulation of capital throughout the world, which is considered a global village ruled by the feudal barons of the new world order. Profit,social control, and capitalism are the key words of the new era. The global public is easily manipulated by omnipotent media, financial means, and other tools to present the new global reality, an artificial reality carefully and neatly crafted and promoted.

In this environment of globalization, critics have ample grounds to express concern. For example, Rifkin (1996) has announced “the end of work,” Wilson (1996) has argued about the loss of urban jobs, Mele (1996) and Knox (1997) have argued about the loss of the sense of community and urban infrastructure, Picciotto (1989) and Cox (1993) have discussed the loss of territorial sovereignty of nation-states, and Korbin (1996) has warned about the “return back to medievalism.” While proponents of globalization presented a rosy picture of the new world order under corporate globalization, where there would be no conflicts, no wars, and no poverty, critics warned against the devastating effects of globalization. For example, while Fukuyama (1992) spoke of “the end of history and of man” and Huntington (1996) spoke of the “clash of civilizations,” Brecher and Costello (1994) warned of a “global pillage,” Parenti (1995) spoke of global “corpocracy and plutocracy,” Farazmand (1998, 1999) argued about “the rise of wage slavery and mercenary systems of socioeconomic order,” and Stever (1988) argued about the end of public administration. Crises of institutions have for the last 10 years reached a higher level of criticality. Of these, the crisis of governance in the West and in the core of global capitalism, as well as in community and family institutions that form the backbones of society, has deepened.

Popular books signal waves and shifting global paradigms away from stable patterns. The collapse of global systems and great powers, revolutionary changes, breakdown of family institutions and traditions, global financial crisis, and environmental decay are but a few such crises that should alarm us all. Information technology has also broken down barriers among nations, people, and organizations around the globe. No longer can organizations and governments rely on patterns of continuity and stability. No longer can individuals predict and feel secure about their futures. No longer can anyone escape the devastating impacts of crises—crises that have reached a new level and have been eroding the fundamental underpinnings and basic assumptions of humanity. But these crises are largely covered up by the military, communication, and financial arms of the globally dominant states, some with predatory characters and behaviors. Feeling a sense of powerlessness and insecurity, therefore, people and groups worldwide seek alternative shelters for self-protection and expression in their attempts to escape degradation, dehumanization, indignation, and exploitation—it is a matter of survival. They are forced into practices of self-censorship, role playing, and pretension as the new culture of globalism and global order invades societies.

As a result, work alienation, social alienation, and self-alienation are increasingly seeping into personal and social life, and pervading societies, mostly in the countries of the South, but the phenomenon has eclipsed the nations of the North as well. Still, many also refuse the indignation, resist the destruction of who they are, and struggle to maintain identity, while some pretend to be part of the status quo to reduce survival costs, but they may be walking bombs ready to explode at any time. Some take their lives either individually or in mass, others find nothing to lose and turn against all social norms. Crises are therefore transformed into different forms and linger through different levels of criticality until they explode, perhaps globally all at the same time. The protest movement of “Occupy Wall Street” has now expanded and transformed into a global movement of counterglobalization,counterrepression, and counterexploitation, “reclaiming the people power from the elites,” and “fundamental institutional, political, and economic system changes” (Farazmand forthcoming).

1.2 Nature of Crises

Crises occur at all levels and appear in all guises. Some are long-term processes of deterioration, while others are rapid ruptures; some have their origins and roots in the past, while others are created by chance and the risks posed by a particular environment; some are caused internally, while others externally. Some crises are creeping and lingering, due to illegitimacy and system entropies (e.g., the Shah’s regime in Iran), while others may occur suddenly (e.g., the stock market crash of 1929, causing the Great Depression). Crises come in a variety of kinds and forms: economic crisis (note the chronic crises of debt among Latin American nations, some European nations’ financial crisis, the New York City fiscal crisis of 1974, or the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the stock market crash of 2008); political crisis (e.g., revolutions in Iran, Russia, France, Nicaragua, and China, as well as other wars); environmental crisis (e.g., ozone layer depletion, Bhopal and Chernobyl disasters in India and Russia, respectively, or the Three-Mile Island nuclear crisis in the United States); organizational and leadership crises causing severe decline and deaths (Hurricane Katrina and the New Orleans crisis—see Farazmand 1996, 2007); moral bankruptcy and unethical conduct in public office (e.g., Clinton’s presidency); and emergency management crisis of New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina (Farazmand 2007), or the Fukushima crisis in Japan caused by a massive earthquake and tsunami with the subsequent nuclear reactor meltdown (see Chapter 26).

Crises involve events and processes that carry severe threat, uncertainty, an unknown outcome, and urgency. Crises scramble plans, interrupt continuities, and brutally paralyze normal operations and human lives. Most crises have trigger points so critical as to leave historical marks on nations, groups, and individual lives. They are historical points of reference, distinguishing between the past and the present. They leave memories for those involved in such events as disasters, hijackings, riots, revolts, and revolutions. Years, months, and days become historic points of demarcation, such as 1914, 1917, 1929, 1940, and 1978–1979; crisis events become memorable, such as the assassination of Rabin, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, Nixon’s presidency, the Middle East crisis and the Arab Spring or revolutions, the Persian Gulf crisis of 1991, the “black Friday” and the February Revolution (Iran), the October Revolution (Russia), and so on (Rosenthal and Kouzmin 1993; Farazmand 1996, 2001).

Crises also come in a variety of forms, such as terrorism (New York World Trade Center, Oklahoma bombings, and the September 11, 2001, bombing of the New York Twin Towers), natural disasters (Hurricanes Hugo and Andrew in Florida, the Holland and Bangladesh flood disasters), nuclear power plant accidents (Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima), riots (Los Angeles and Paris riots of 1968 and 2011, or the London riot of 2011, or periodic prison riots), business crises, and organizational crises facing life-or-death situations in a time of rapid environmental changes. Some crises can be managed successfully, while others lead to failures and further disasters. Some lead to new and positive changes in society, while others to further calamities.

Some crises are caused by governmental and corporate actions (Exxon’s oil leakage in Alaska, the Branch Davidian catastrophe in Texas, the 2011 BPM oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, environmental pollution and decay, etc.) or inaction, leaving simple problems or conflicts that become transformed into major crises (the Balkan crises, prison riots, many African ethnic or tribal conflicts, massive epidemic health crises, or mass starvation and food crises, again as in Africa). Some events creep through, with a particular small starting point, and snowball over time into full-scale crises. This is common among public and private organizations, whose elites “may convert their embarrassment over prolonged negligence into over-hasty and ill-conceived efforts to undo years of non-action and non-decision making” (Rosenthal and Kouzmin 1993:5).

Crises consist of “a short chain of events that destroy or drastically weaken” a condition of equilibrium and the effectiveness of a system or regime within a period of days, weeks, or hours, rather than years. In this sense, a crisis is not the same as tensions, as referred to by many scholars, or the process-oriented crisis mentioned earlier. Therefore, there are two types of crises: a process-oriented one developing over a period of time, and a sudden rupture developing within weeks, days, hours, or even minutes (Farazmand 1996). The latter crisis is “fraught with far-reaching implications. It threatens to involve large segments of society in violent actions” (Dogan and Higley 1996:5).

1.3 Characteristics of Crises

A central feature of all crises is the sense of urgency, and, in many cases, urgency becomes the most compelling crisis characteristic. Situations change so dramatically and so rapidly that no one seems to be able to predict the chain of events or the possible outcomes. An important aspect of such crisis situations is the dynamics that evolve during days, hours, and even minutes. In a revolutionary crisis, such unpredictability, uncertainty, and change characterize the dynamics of the unfolding events. Leaders and decision makers are often caught by surprise due to the many forces, such as the masses, strength or weaknesses of the regime and the ruling elite, external or internal actors, climatic conditions, and national characters. Surprises characterize the dynamics of crisis situations (Farazmand 1996, 2001, 2007).

Some crises are processes of events that lead to a level of criticality or degree of intensity generally out of control. Crises often have past origins, and diagnosing their original sources can help understand and manage a particular crisis, or lead it to an alternative state of condition. Crises take several forms and display many patterns, such as defeat in international warfare, revolution, sudden breakdown of unstable democratic regimes, economic disaster, implosion, loss of foreign support resulting in the falling of a dependent regime, and—temperature change...