Digital Commons Network^™

While idealized crisis response involves smooth coordination between relevant actors, friction between levels of government and between the state and civil society in responding to catastrophe may be more common. This article builds a theory of cross-level friction during and after crisis by analyzing the conditions when discord is most likely. With a medium-N dataset (N = 18) of disaster responses from, among other countries, Chile, Haiti, Japan, North America, the Philippines, and Somalia, I carry out quantitative and qualitative analysis of cases with a variety of levels of friction to investigate the conditions that lead to misalignment. Tobit regression, …