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Full-Text Articles in Political Theory
Is Federalism The Reason For Policy Failure In Hurricane Katrina?, Thomas Birkland, Sarah Waterman
Is Federalism The Reason For Policy Failure In Hurricane Katrina?, Thomas Birkland, Sarah Waterman
Thomas A Birkland
Governmental responses to Hurricane Katrina are generally cited as policy failures. Media and popular analyses focus on the federal government’s policy failures in hazard preparedness, response, and recovery. Meanwhile, disaster experts realize that disaster response is a shared intergovernmental responsibility.We examine the federal nature of natural disaster policy in the US to consider whether federalism, or other factors, had the greatest influence on the failures in Katrina.We find that some policy failures are related to policy design considerations based in federalism, but that the national focus on ‘‘homeland security’’ and the concomitant reduction in attention to natural hazards and disasters, …
Lots Of Luck: Contextualizing Sortition In Approaches To Chance, Mindy Peden
Lots Of Luck: Contextualizing Sortition In Approaches To Chance, Mindy Peden
Mindy Peden
Explores the ways in which luck and chance have been understood by political theorists. Contemporary political thinkers understand luck to describe those situations in which the individual subject has no control. Chance, however, has been understood in a variety of ways over time, beginning with Aristotle suggesting that chance is the “coincidental intersection of two separate causes.” Enlightenment thinkers argue, however, from a more deterministic perspective suggesting that chance is an epistemological category resulting from a deficit of human knowledge. In other words, the world is deterministic and certain even if not predictable by humans. That the world is a …