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Full-Text Articles in Public Policy
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, …
Global Governance Organizations: Legitimacy And Authority In Conflict, Jonathan Koppell
Global Governance Organizations: Legitimacy And Authority In Conflict, Jonathan Koppell
Jonathan GS Koppell
Global governance organizations (GGOs) are frequently maligned as both illegitimate and ineffective. With the growing prominence of entities that promulgate global rules governing trade, communications, finance, and transport, these shortcomings take on greater importance. This essay presents a theoretical framework to understand the challenge of legitimacy for GGOs. It argues that GGOs tend to face trade-offs between legitimacy and authority, but that widespread usages of these important terms conflate or confuse them and thus obscure critical issues in GGO politics. Once these terms are more clearly defined, we see more easily that GGOs must sometimes violate democratic norms, sacrificing equality …