Fadillah Putra
In public administration or in the public policy realm, crisis management is given little attention either in the academic or in the professional worlds (Schneider, 1995). Traditional public administration focuses only on planned and programmed activities, meaning those passed through long public policy making phases and procedures. This process creates the general perception of public administration as a science in which organizational and bureaucratic routines become the main concern. However, the most challenging role of government is not to control these routines, but rather to perform well when tested by crisis (Farazmand, 2007). There are many stories that relate government’s failures to cope with crises. At the same time, victims rely heavily on government actions during crisis, because they always think that government is the most responsible institution to handle a crisis (Boin, 2005). However, the literature on crisis management in the public sector is very limited.
This essay explores some strategic topics of crisis management that are relevant to the development of public administration science. Those topics are: (1) the basic understanding of crisis management in public affairs; (2) the role of government in a crisis situation at both national and local levels; (3) the role of international organizations; and (4) the media and civil society involvement in crisis management. Comparative case studies (Hurricane Katrina in the U.S. and the Lapindo Mud Explosion in Indonesia) will be provided in order to give real-world perspective to these four aspects.
Understanding a crisis situation
As commonly understood in much of the literature on the topic, including the U.N. standard, there are two contexts of crises: natural and man-made (Samal, 2005; Schneider, 1995; Nudell, 1988). However, some crisis management scholars are not satisfied with this categorization. Ali Farazmand (2001) argues that there are four contexts of crisis: political, economic, leadership, and environmental. This categorization is very descriptive and provides more details about man-made crises (political, economic, and leadership). The environmental context is still ambiguous because environmental crises could be man-made (such as the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in Alaska in 1989) or natural (the Asian Tsunami in 2004 or Hurricane Katrina the year after).
On the other hand, Schoff (2004) differentiates crises into three contexts: natural, incidents, and accidents. Through this categorization, he explains the dimensions of man-made crisis, which he defines as accidents (unintentional man-made crises, such as the Three Mile Island case in Pennsylvania in 1979, and Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986) and incident (intentional man-made crises, such as terrorist attacks or war). These different contexts of crisis are crucial in shaping and evaluating government response.
A further important distinction is the differentiation of incidents when a true crisis situation is present or incidents in which events are in the normal parameters of public sector activity. First of all, a crisis situation relates to a particular situation when government capacity is inadequate to handle a situation using its own resources (Ozerdem, 2006). For example, if a bus accident happens and kills seven people, it is not a crisis, because the police and hospital can handle it with their own resources. But if the bus contains a bomb and explodes right in the middle of downtown, it injures thousands of people, the police aren’t able to handle the panic, and the hospitals don’t have enough space for victims, then that is a crisis. Other characteristics of a crisis are: severe threat (Farazmand, 2001; Rosenthal, 2001); threat to the basic structure (physical and nonphysical) and values (such as security, welfare, or health) of society (Boin, 2004; Farazmand, 2007); the inconceivability and unexpected nature of an event (Dror in Rosenthal, 2001); and an event that generates extreme psychological stress (Schneider, 1995). With this complex explanation of the term “crisis,” the best way to understand it is not to perceive it as the particular calamity moments themselves, but how the event relates to an organization’s capacity to respond to the situation (Smith, 2006). There are many types of crisis situations. In general, we can differentiate crisis into two types: sudden crisis (such as tsunami, terrorist attack, or nuclear reactor explosion) and creeping crisis (such as
spreading of a virus or the global warming threat) (Farazmand, 2001). More details of this typology of crisis can be seen in fi gure 1.
Obviously, the hardest crisis to cope with is a fast-developing one, because the degree of preparedness of the government to handle it is very low. On the other hand, in a slow-developing crisis, such as a cathartic or creeping crisis, if the awareness of the government to the crisis is low, it could create long-term and possibly irreversible damages.
Along with the negative face of a crisis, some crisis events may yield positive outcomes. A crisis could become a triggering opportunity for improvement of the system (Farazmand, 2001; Nudell, 1988; Rosenthal, 2001). A postcrisis reconstruction process could yield outcomes that are better than the precrisis situation, and the government also is afforded the opportunity to learn about its own weaknesses and thus improve upon its substantial ability to respond to future crisis events.
Good crisis management
There are at least three domains in which crisis management is systematically analyzed by scholars: business, international politics, and public affairs. Business is a discipline in which crisis management is a prominent subject of discussion. In this area, crisis management relates to how to make the corporation survive after a crisis, meaning how to “avoid suffering financial losses after the crisis” (Laye, 2002). The study of crisis management is also commonly found in international relation studies, most commonly related to potential war between countries. The main goal of crisis management is ensuring that the tensions between countries do not turn into war, and that good diplomacy will be the main strategy of crisis management in this sense (Winham, 1988, Schoff, 2004). The last discipline that is concerned with crisis management, though not as much as the previous two, is in public affairs/administration. In this domain, crisis management relates to how government can prevent, react to, and rehabilitate after a crisis. This essay will only focus on the discussion of crisis and response from the perspective of public sector intervention and management of domestic crises. Public sector crisis management in general can be defined as the implementation of management principles (such as planning, organizing, decision making, coordinating, and controlling) in a crisis or emergency situation (Samal, 2005; Nudel, 1988; Rosenthal, 2001).
However, crisis management is not merely applying basic management principles into a crisis context. Uriel Rosenthal (2001), for instance, explained that the crucial phases of crisis management are prevention, planning, response, and aftermath actions. The last phase (aftermath action) is not a part of the traditional public management discussion. Indeed, there are some specific phases in crisis management that are not part of traditional management principles.
There are three specific phases of public sector crisis management. The first is the preventive aspect; some scholars describe this aspect using different terms, such as planning, preparedness, and/or mitigation. The second is the rehabilitation aspect; some scholars call this aspect relief, recovery, response, or aftermath actions. This aspect is also the key aspect of crisis management (Ozerdem, 2006; Drennan, 2007; Samal 2005). The third one is coordination; this aspect is not specific to a crisis management context, but “coordination” between institutions in a rapidly changing situation has been emphasized by many scholars. Since an “in-crisis” government may not seek to limit incoming resources (Farazmand, 2007), many organizations may intervene to provide help or goods. Therefore, during or after a calamity, there are often many organizations, institutions, and elements coming into the crisis location. Coordinating those organizations so that the distribution of goods and the activities of each institution will not confl ict or overlap is a major challenge for government (Nudel, 1988).
The next step in analyzing public sector crisis management is evaluating the effectiveness of crisis management in practice. Boin (2008) raises three important requirements for good crisis management, which are: sense making, how to understand the situation quickly; meaning making, how to create solid information for media and the public; and learning, how government can learn from the crisis to improve its capacity. Additionally, Ali Farazmand (2007) emphasizes “creative and agile leadership” as the most important requirement for good crisis management.
There are also some specific crisis management requirements that apply to urban areas. First, local governments need to have their own strong crisis management systems, which will allow them not to rely heavily on central government when the crisis occurs (Rosenthal, 2001). The cases of the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York City in 2001, 11/3 in Madrid in 2004, and the Mexico City earthquake in 1985 showed how important it is for cities to have their own crisis management system. Cities should have their own crisis management system because of the density of inhabitants and because they are the centers of business and government networks. Yet, Kartez and Lindell (in Sylves, 1990) said that while “80 percent of the U.S. local governments have a formal disaster plan and system, their leaders continue to be surprised when the crisis occurs.” Therefore, the existence of a strong system is no longer the issue, but rather how to familiarize relevant agencies and responsible leaders with the system in order for them to use it with efficiency.
The second important requirement for urban area crisis management is multiethnic awareness. Obviously, urban areas have had urbanization and immigration for a long time. Urban areas are the melting pot of many cultures and ethnicities. Every ethnic group has its own standard norms and values; therefore, if the crisis leaders are not sensitive to this aspect, misunderstandings between government and the people could interrupt the process of crisis responses and relief (Rosenthal, 2001). Both ethnic differences of the urban social aspect could disrupt the rehabilitation process and economic gaps. Poor communities (which in some senses are also related to certain ethnic groups) are the most vulnerable groups during a crisis: In New Orleans [during the Katrina crisis], local
government did not provide transportation for the citizens without their own vehicles to evacuate. As it turns out, most of them were in predominately black neighborhoods. Racial and economic demographics in disaster-prone zone has bee shown to be common adjoining hazardous material sties. . . . In July 2005, monsoon rains flooded the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay) and eight million of India’s poorest were the victims. (Pinkowski 2008, 12)
Good crisis management also strongly depends on decision-making strategies. Figure 2 emphasizes how decision making can achieve maximum accuracy when the decision maker working in a crisis situation makes good decisions rapidly, despite risk and time pressures. The first and the most important step in this method is situation assessment, which involves attending to a selection of the available cues, assembling them into a pattern, and searching long-term memory to recognize the problem (Flin, Youngson, and Yule, 2006).
The second step is choosing decision-making strategies based on the types of crisis (fi gure 1). If the type of crisis is “fast burning,” crisis leaders might choose recognition-primed/intuitive because this method is good for quick action to prevent a rapid cascade to a catastrophic adverse outcome. If the type of crisis is “cathartic crisis,” the leader should use rule-based strategy because he/she has enough time to consult with the procedures manual/checklist to find the given responses. If the type of crisis is “long shadow,” the leader may use analytical strategy because he/she has more time to recall a number of possible courses of action and compares them simultaneously to determine which one best fits the needs of the situation. Lastly, if the type of crisis is “slow burning,” a crisis leader could use creative strategy because there is plenty of time for him/her to try any innovative solutions to solve the problem. However, one still has to keep in mind that evacuating and aiding victims is the first priority regardless of which strategy is chosen.
Ultimately, the fundamental concept of good crisis management is determined by the “gap between bureaucratic norm and emergent norm” (Schneider, 1995). The more government can shrink the gap, the better the crisis management will be. Bureaucratic norms always value regularities, procedures, and blueprints. Public officers are required to follow the procedures and blueprints tightly in order to precede their jobs. However, in emergent norms, the situation is the opposite. Crisis situations change very fast and most of the time are unpredictable. Therefore, instead of following the bureaucratic procedures, emergent norms requires crisis officers to be adaptive to the situation. As there are no regularities in crisis situations, emergent norms require public officers to instead come up with strategies to handle the problem rather than simply use blueprints and regulations. The bureaucratic procedures and the emergent norms contradict each other, posing a big challenge for public management of crises.
In a crisis situation, government needs to be more adaptive (emergent norm). On the other hand, it also has to ensure the legal accountability (bureaucratic norm) of each decision it takes. Dealing with these two norms, of course, is not an easy task. In so doing, governments need to adjust their bureaucratic norms to the realities and needs that exist on the ground during the crisis situation. This is crucially important for public sector leaders when they are facing a crisis situation. Of course, in “long shadow” and “slow burning” types of crisis, government could impose its bureaucratic norm, but not in a “fast burning” crisis.
In sum, there are four main criteria to measure the performance of public sector crisis management. First, the question is whether or not the government has a crisis management system within its organization. The tasks of the system are preventive, rehabilitation, and coordination measures. Second is the question of the sensitivity of government to multi-identities (including ethnic, class, age, and gender) while rescuing the victims. The third criteria is related to decision-making strategy in a crisis situation. And the fourth is the question of how successfully the government can adjust its bureaucratic norms with emergent norms in the crisis situation.
Role of government
Most governments do not pay too much attention to crisis management because they think that a crisis is an unusual and unpredictable situation, so well-planned and organizational actions from government are not needed. Yet, governments have to be the most prepared institutions, because people (especially victims) always expect that governments will play central roles during crises (Drennan, 2007; Boin, 2008). Moreover, the failure of a government to cope with a crisis is not tolerated politically; failure to effectively respond to a crisis situation could destroy the political legitimacy of a regime (Boin, 2005). Crisis, hence, must be seen as a test for government (Farazmand, 2007).
Arjen Boin described four aspects of government that are impacted by crisis. Among them are “effects on key political officeholders, strength of leadership, political institutions and policy changes” (Boin, 2008, 292). Moreover, government is sometimes held responsible in a crisis, especially if it fails to take adequate preventive efforts. For example, when government fails to educate people or to implement important standards about building safer housing for earthquakes (like the tsunami) more people may be killed because of this lack of action (Samal, 2005; Ozerdem, 2006). Indeed, the main idea of crisis management is not to stop the occurrence of calamities, especially from natural crises, but the most critical objective in any crisis is “to contain damages as much as possible and prevent the loss of life and property” (Kalantari in Farazmand, 2004, 619). This is basic criteria to evaluate governments’ core role in the overall crisis management system.
Why do some governments succeed while others fail in handling a crisis? Saundra K. Schneider (1995) reminds us to be careful when judging a government’s success or failure in terms of crisis management, because judgments are usually based on public opinion (media) rather than based on objective evaluation. Of course public opinion is important, but it is not the only instrument of judgment that should be taken into consideration. The other complication of judging the failures of government is to decide if government actions are too slow or if public demand is unrealistic. Therefore, Schneider ended up measuring the gap between the bureaucratic norm and the emergent norm as the main tool to evaluate the quality of a government’s crisis management.
In terms of quality of crisis management, there is an interesting and important argument that claims that the weatlth of a country does not affect the quality of crisis management. A study conducted by Ozerdem (2006) in Japan, Turkey, and India serves as an example for this argument. Japan, as one of the wealthiest countries in the world, has a lack of volunteerism (which is extremely important during a crisis), due to its modern individualized society. In India, on the other hand, there was no lack of volunteerism, but the country does have problems in infrastructure because of economic reasons.
This argument is important because no countries’ leaders should be overconfirmed dent or underestimate themselves regarding crisis preparedness. All countries have the same chance of being successful or failing. The capacity of government to cope with crisis depends on how seriously the government thinks about this particular issue.
Quality crisis management is not only related to fewer numbers of victims, but also to how much government can learn, and then make progressive changes from the crisis. In the case of Japan, there were policy and administrative changes; in Turkey they had bureaucratic paradigmatic shifts after the Marmara earthquake; but in India there were not so many changes after the crises (Ozerdem, 2006; Boin, 2008). Therefore, the point of crisis as an opportunity does not always happen. Sometimes a crisis does not affect anything or even makes the status quo stronger.
The concrete actions that governments can take in crisis management fall into three categories. First are preventive actions. In the cases of slow-developing crises, governments can implement long-term measures, while in cases of fast-developing crises governments can have a high-level preparedness system to minimize victims when a crisis occurs (Samal, 2005). This sort of action calls for rigorous contingency planning, which consists of defining roles of responsibilities and the line of command guidance in a crisis event (Drennan, 2007). Second, during the crisis governments have to create a clear, organized command structure, which can coordinate and control the situation (Kalatari in Farazmand, 2004). Third, after a crisis, management is related to how governments can encourage people to overcome their own problems with government assistance (Samal, 2005).
Some countries already have a good government crisis response system. The U.S., for instance, has a crisis response system that puts community and local government at the forefront. The system also includes coordination at state and federal levels, and it decides when to send FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) to the location after presidential declaration. However, there are some problems, such as overlap of responsibilities within government institutions, public officials who are unable to coordinate all elements, due to the budget constraint, that make the system not work perfectly (Schneider, 1995). In London, responsibilities among local departments for handling crisis situations is stated clearly, and specific job distribution includes what police, hospitals, fi refi ghters, and others should do when a crisis occurs (Drennan, 2007, 131). We can find a good example of a government crisis management system in Iran through a council (NETF/National Emergency Task Force) that has the three main duties of “prevention, relief and reconstruction which are constitutionally stated in article number 5-2” (Kalatari in Farazmand, 2004, 621). From these examples, we can see that in regard to a good crisis management model, the content of intergovernment relations shape the response system.
The relationship between local and central governments is the central issue in the discussion of the government’s role in crisis management. First of all, the capacity of local government has to be clarifi ed. In terms of crisis management, the meaning of capacity is linked with fi nances (how much money should be allocated to maintain the system), authority (how much discretion it has in making decisions), skill (how many experts it has), and administration capacity (how good is the credibility of organization and infrastructure). Some scholars, such as Settle, Cigler, and Vittes, argue that besides these internal aspects (local government capacity) coordination problems between local and central governments have also led to failures of crisis coping elsewhere (Sylves, 1990).
Local governments need to have their own crisis management institutions, especially for big cities (Pinkowski, 2008, 158; Rosenthal, 1994). Therefore, decentralization is important in crisis management. Decentralization in this sense is not only meant to empower local governments so that they have discretion in their decision making, but also provides more money and other resources. In the case of a large-scale crisis, the central government needs to do coordination of interstate borders and aid victims without sacrifi cing local autonomy by government impact (Pinkowski, 2008).
Lastly, governments ought to treat crises and disasters like they treat any other policy sectors such as transportation, education, health, or agriculture. The treatment of crisis implies not only creating specific institutions and organizations to handle them, but also creating a good planning strategy, implementation strategy, and evaluation system regarding crisis management (Schneider, 1995).
The role of media
The role of the media is emphasized in the literature on crisis management. This fact shows the significant part that media plays in the whole context of crisis management study. There are three aspects to present in this section: the basic understanding of the media, the position of media in a crisis situation, and how government should handle media in crisis management.
The media is a news business and they live from selling news. News is always related to unique and unusual events (Nudell, 1988, Rosenthal, 2001); there is massive violence, destruction, and acute human or company culpability in particular accidents (Nudell, 1988, 64; Boin, 2005, 72). Normal and regular events are not considered news in the media’s perspective. Thousands of airplanes landing safely every day is not news, but one failed landing is news. Therefore, disaster and crisis situations always become news, the commodity that media always wants to sell. Network news organizations, along with print journalists, want to report items that will appeal to the widest possible audience. Stories about unmanageable disaster conditions, bureaucratic indifference to human suffering, and the sheer human chaos produced by natural catastrophes are attractive scenarios from a journalistic perspective. (Schneider, 1995, 164–165)
However, the media have been playing a very significant role, especially in providing information to the public. The media does not only provide information about the situation during and after a crisis, but also information regarding preparedness for the crisis. In addition, the media should ensure that they tell a good story and make government look good. The media are crucial for alerts, warnings, and accurate and useful evacuation information.
In general, there are two kinds of media, print (newspaper and magazine) and electronic media (television and radio). These two categories are fundamentally different: electronic media focus on time (the faster the better), while printed media pay more attention to the completeness of the story. On the other hand, there are some similarities between them. First, they always want to get a clear explanation of the events. This nature makes the media always want to find more sources of information, especially when the official sources do not satisfy them. Second, the media has a certain duration for publishing one particular topic, and after several stories they will change the topic. No matter whether the crisis is already resolved or not, the media tend to find another issue if their audience is getting bored with the topic (Nudell, 1988).
In a crisis situation, the media could determine the outcome of government efforts, create the postevent perception, disseminate ideas of what actually happened, assess the authority performance, and promote or squash rumors (Rosenthal, 2001). Therefore, government needs to provide very good and proper information to the media. Yet, the media are usually more interested in getting the information from victims or their families or friends as sources rather than government officials (Nudell, 1988). Indeed, victims and people around them are naturally absorbed with their problem, sadness, and suffering. Then, they usually demand more from the government than it offers. This sort of phenomenon is usually picked up by journalists. On some level, when journalists write this story, they will make the officers work under pressure (Rosenthal, 2001). This is the biggest challenge for government in managing crisis. If government mismanages the media in crisis, the gap between bureaucratic and emergence norms could become larger (Schneider, 1995) or even worse. This also could speed the transformation from crisis to chaos (Farazmand, 2007).
The power of media and yet the media’s tendency to show the negative effects of events are the reasons why, sometimes, government regards the media as an enemy. This is not a good attitude because the media is central to delivering important information to the public, to warning people about the possible dangers, to squashing rumors, and to telling people about how to access government assistance. Government still needs media. It is important for government to find the balance between the negative and positive aspects of media in a crisis situation. Hence the emerging views of the role of media during disasters and crises is a more paradoxical one: yes, they can cause a lot of trouble and consume a lot of attention; but yes, they can also be tremendously helpful to communicate with the public.(Rosenthal, 2001, 127–128)
This point leads us to the question of how the government should handle the media. The most important thing for a government to do is not to avoid the media. If the government fears the media, journalists will think that the government is hiding something, and then they will go to find other sources that government cannot control (Nudell, 1988; Rosenthal, 2001, 103). Therefore, providing systematic, coordinated, and controlled information to the media is extremely important.
In order to provide systematic and controlled information to the media, highly skilled and experienced spokespersons are needed. The main requirement of the spokesperson is a very good understanding of both the outside (rumors and public opinions) and inside (what’s going on in the government response system) situations. Ideally, there is only one spokesperson to avoid inconsistent information (Nudell, 1988). However, in some places this duty is handled by multiple parties. In the Netherlands, for instance, in the 1992 Biljmer disaster, the spokesmen were known as the “triumvirate,” which included the mayor, head of the police department and head of the fi re department (Rosenthal, 1994). The other important thing regarding the control of information to the public is the content of the statement that the spokesperson makes. The statement has to be well prepared, easily understood (does not cause multiple interpretations), comprehensive, and responsible, and the most important thing is the message has to be honest. As Nudell points out:
Honesty is really the best policy in crisis management, if only because of the dangers of being found out. You don’t have to tell the media everything you know, but what do you say should be accurate. This applies not only to the literal accuracy of the facts, but to overall impression you give as well. Don’t try to mislead reporters; tell them what you can and don’t talk about what you can’t. It won’t always be easy, but it will do the most good and the least damage in the long run. (Nudell, 1988, 78).
A press conference should be held every day, at least twice a day, morning and evening (Rosenthal, 2001). By doing so, it will satisfy the journalists’ deadlines and the response of the newest progress of government works will also be announced earlier. By using all of these strategies, the government places the media as an integral part of the crisis management.
Role of civil society
Civil society in this essay means institutionalized and organized private and nonprofit institutions. This could mean the difference between grassroots organizations (GROs) or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) (Uphoff, 1994), or the more detailed categorization from Kaldor (2003) of social movement, NGOs, social organizations (similar to GROs), and nationalist/religious groups. Therefore, the focus of the role of civil society in crisis management is on the role of these formal organizations, commonly called civil society organizations (CSOs).
There are two main reasons why the involvement of CSOs in governmental crisis management is important. First, CSOs, especially at local and community levels, can think and react more rationally and contextually during the crisis than government because they feel the disaster directly (Boin, 2004, 75). In the case of the supercyclone at Orissa, India, in 1999, CSOs came to the location earlier than government did (Samal, 2005). Moreover, CSOs also can provide experts, basic necessities, and volunteer forces more quickly and with less bureaucratic involvement than government does (Ozerdem, 2006). In some case studies we can see that CSOs played a very important role during Katrina.
The second reason is political and organizational. Public and/ or civil society is the most important stakeholder of public sector organizations (PSOs); therefore, PSOs have a responsibility to public or civil society. This point leads us to the conclusion that governmental response systems have to have public accountability (Schneider, 1995), and also social responsibility. This implies not only answering the public’s questions, but also giving them input and advice, and allowing them to evaluate the whole process of crisis management (Drennan, 2007).
To understand the real action that CSOs could take in a crisis situation is important. As already stated at the beginning of the paper, the key concept of crisis is an unusual and extraordinary situation that attacks the basic structure and values of a society (Boin, 2008). Therefore, the process of reconstruction not only comprises the physical aspect, but also psychological and social aspects. This is the basic argument of “community redevelopment concept” in which citizen participation is emphasized in order “to bring the community back to exactly where it was before disaster” (Sears in Pinkowski, 2008). In order to do so, there are many real actions that CSOs could perform, such as rebuilding the social networks, providing leadership, and recovering people’s psychology. For physical rehabilitation, the real actions could be mobilizing volunteers, providing public goods (foods, shelter, health services, etc.), and providing experts (Samal, 2005; Ozerdem, 2006).
A new model of CSO’s involvement in crisis management has been developed and is gaining support. Alka Dhameja (in Pinkowski, 2008) came up with the community-based disaster management (CBDM) concept, which is a community-based approach. This model emphasizes the involvement of CSOs in crisis management to enable civil society to become directly involved in the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of crisis public policy. Through putting the focus on local community CSOs, Samal (2005) argued that local communities have to be the most prepared element because they are the first element that is directly touched by a crisis and its effects. This is the basic argument of community contingency planning (CCP) that is developed at a village and community level. In India, these small organizations have an umbrella organization at the state level called ODMM. This organization guarantees the ongoing involvement of civil society in an overall government crisis management system (Samal, 2005). This kind of organization is also helpful for government in that it makes coordination easier.
Role of international institutions
Globalization has been widely discussed in the public administration realm. International actors and elements that were not taken into account in governance studies now have become the important elements (Farazmand, 2004). Also in crisis management, the role of these international institutions has become increasingly important. However, there are still some issues regarding their role across countries.
Large-scale calamities inevitably attract world attention. The disaster at Sichuan, China, that caused 69,000 people to be killed is one example, as are the billions of U.S. dollars spent in the Asian tsunami in 2004, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the South Asia earthquake in 2005 (Coppola, 2006, 530). Many international institutions were present to give help. However, that is not always the case. No matter how big the disaster is, if there is no permission from the country, it is hard for international institutions to enter the country. The disaster cyclone at Nargis Burma in early May 2008, for instance, also attracted world attention, but no international donors intervened because the domestic political aspect in Burma did not allow it.
International aid for disaster across countries began to increase in the 1970s. That trend was specifically caused by some big disasters happening at the time. The drought in Ethiopia in 1975 and the Tangshan earthquake in China in 1976 that killed over 290,000 people expanded the role of international donors in crisis situations. International institutions were also present to help with man-made crises. For example, aid for Cambodian refugees because of cruelty of the Khmer Rouge regime, or, in the same year and in a similar case, Afghanistan’s refugees because of war in 1979. These disasters are events that promoted the emergence of the “international disaster management” idea (Rosenthal, 2001).
Much like the CSOs, the role of international donors has also been criticized about its narrow relief-oriented approach. Instead of just giving aid for the postdisaster situation, such as food, water, shelter, or health care, now international institutions have started to have a more strategic approach to crisis management: The emphasis given to preparedness measures in operational considerations, the expansion of disaster management into prevention and mitigation issues, as well as the recognition of inherent linkages between disaster and development issues were further reflected in a number of disaster management manual issued during mid-1980s. UNICEF, UNHCR, The World Food Program, as well as larger global NGOs such as CARE, OXFAM, and Save the Children published emergency management manual. Organizations such as The International Committee of the Red Cross, and some bilateral emergency assistance organizations did the likewise during the same period. (Rosenthal, 2001, 318)
Since the 1980s, the importance of international disaster management has evolved. In 1980, International City Management Association (ICMA) conducted a survey about cities’ preparedness for disaster around the world. This survey motivated cities surveyed to improve the quality of their crisis management system (Kartez in Sylves, 1990). The more concrete and significant action was taken when The International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) institution was founded in 1989, and then became a formal part of the U.N. (Ozerdem, 2006). Besides coordinating many international disaster donors, IDNDR also has important duties including “reduc[ing] risk of calamities, promotion to apply scientific, technical and other professional abilities to disaster prevention efforts” (Coppola, 2006; Rosenthal, 2001). These international institutions have played a very significant role. The supercyclone at Orissa, India, in 1999 was an accurate example (Samal, 2005).
However, there are still some problems with the role of international donors in crisis, especially for developing countries. First, there is the relationship between international donors and the government where the disaster happened. Sometimes there are “confl icts of interest between government and international institutions” (Coppola; 2006, 531; Rosenthal 2001). The Nargis Cyclone of 2008 case is an example: because of the political tension between Burma’s government and the international community, the government refused aid. This kind of problem needs a high level of political reconciliation. The bottom line is good cooperation and relationships between international institutions and domestic government, which is extremely important. The second problem is related to the dependency of the people who receive aid from these international donors. To avoid this problem, international institutions need to use the more sustainable approaches rather than a charity approach when providing aid (Samal, 2005). By using an empowerment approach, international institutions eventually increase the capacity of community and local institutions, which, at the end of the day, will reduce the dependency of local elements.
Case studies
This section will describe how the four elements (government, media, civil society, and international institutions) play their roles in the real world. The first case study is Hurricane Katrina in 2005 in the United States, and the second is the Lapindo hot mud spurt from 2006 to the present in Indonesia. The reason I have chosen Hurricane Katrina is that there are so many studies about this crisis event, so the validity of the findings is stronger. The Lapindo mud is the opposite: qualifi ed reports and publications on this disaster have been hard to find. Hopefully, this article could attract wider attention from international communities and researchers to the crisis. The other reason I have chosen this disaster is not only because of the uniqueness of the disaster, but also the process of mitigation and response is still going on, so this paper could inspire the actors in the fi eld for better actions. Therefore, this case study is not an attempt to compare those two events, but rather to see how the role of four elements actually works in those two places.
Hurricane Katrina This calamity happened on August 29, 2005, in the Gulf Coast area. It struck three states, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. This disaster killed around fifteen hundred people and caused 1.2 million residents to migrate to another places. Fifteen to twenty feet of floodwater covered 80 percent of New Orleans and caused total economic losses of more than one hundred billion dollars, not to mention the amount of infrastructure, houses, and buildings that were destroyed (Johnson, 2006; Gerber in Pinkowski, 2008).
One of the crucial questions is whether the crisis gave opportunity to a better situation after reconstruction. A group of scientists raised an important argument a couple months after Katrina, which emphasized that the trajectory of reconstruction should turn New Orleans into a safer and better city. In order to make the city safer, the reconstruction program should rebuild the new levees, a make limited effort to make buildings flood and wind resistant, and prepare a new evacuation plan. In order to make the city better, reconstruction trajectory should provide new and better schools, parks, houses, ports, infrastructure, tourism, economy, and investments (Kates et al, 2006).
However, three years after the disaster the accomplishments of the program still fell far short of the ideal plan. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation released its survey about the evaluation three years after reconstruction. This survey found that 40 percent of the respondents said their lives were still disrupted, and more than 70 percent said there had been little or no progress in making housing affordable or in controlling crime, which they view as the city’s top problem. The survey also showed majorities saw little or no progress in making medical services available, strengthening public schools, attracting jobs, or rebuilding neighborhoods. The results of this survey are largely consistent with an index of progress compiled by the Brookings Institution and the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center. Their third-year report found that the greater New Orleans area has recovered, but that recovery trends slowed during 2008. Tens of thousands of blighted properties, a lack of affordable housing, and thin public services continue to plague the city. Rents are 46 percent higher than before the storm (New York Times, 2008).
The performance of the government’s role in Katrina was generally bad, especially during the crisis. Government did have the crisis management system (FEMA), but the system did not work as it should have. One of the failures of the system was related to preparedness. The federal government did not build proper levees for a level 5 hurricane, while many people had warned about the possibility of that level of hurricane happening in the area (Farazmand, 2007; Sylvester, 2007). The failure of the system can also be found in the inconsistency of the response system and poor planning.
According to national standards, the scale of this hurricane was categorized as an incident of national significance (INS) that should have automatically gotten a federal-level response. In fact, victims had to wait five days to get a federal government response (Farazmand, 2007; Gerber in Pinkowski, 2008). In this case, government failed to balance its bureaucratic norm with emergent norm. The situation required government to react quickly, as the victims could not wait for a long and bureaucratic federal government’s decision-making process. In this situation, federal government should have used a recognition-primed strategy both in making the decision of sending aid to New Orleans and in reacting to the actual problem on the ground. In so doing, sending leaders who have a strong exposure to such a situation is more important than just sending those who have a good political relationship to the central power.
In general, the breakdown of the decision-making system at all levels was because FEMA was politicized. FEMA had been politicized by the federal government and by President Bush by “putting his close colleague as the leader without thoroughly considering the capacity” (Greber in Pinkowski, 2008, 71). The impact of this decision was that the capability of leadership of this institution became very poor. Following this weakness, FEMA also proved to have failed to manage the balance between the bureaucratic norm and emergent norm. The fact that federal assistance came five days after the disaster was proof that there was a sense of a lack of urgency. The White House took too much time to decide whether or not a federal government intervention was needed. The impact was the government’s failure to speed relief to thousands of victims at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, or to rescue residents (Washington Post, 2005).
The role of international donors, however, had a better result in this disaster. It’s true that there was poor coordination among them, but that was more likely due to government nonintervention. Total aid from international donors was around U.S. one billion dollars, not to mention in-kind help (Richard in Ferris, 2008; Coppola, 2006).
The role of CSOs was quite interesting because there were some contradictions. The CSOs, such as NGOs or church groups, performed well because they addressed basic needs. The government relied on these CSOs, especially in immediate service delivery to the victims (Richard in Ferris, 2008). However, in the areas that have stronger local CSOs, the process of rehabilitation went more slowly than in areas that have weaker ones. Providing shelter was the most important thing in rehabilitation; the research found that it was easier to put shelters in the areas in which local communities were weaker. On the other hand, it was more difficult to put shelters in the stronger local community areas.
“You can’t rebuild a community if you are taking sacred parts of that community and destroying it” (quoted in Varney and Carr, 2005). New Orleans Councilman Jay Batt put up campaign posters with an image of a temporary FEMA trailer crossed out by a red circle with a line through it next to the heading, “He protected the integrity of neighbourhoods in district A by not allowing trailers to be placed in parks and playgrounds where our children play” (Batt in Aldrich, 2006, 380).
Media had a very important role during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. ABC’s Good Morning America on September 1, 2005, for instance, aired a statement from President Bush that said that nobody anticipated the breach of the levees. After that statement, the program showed the old news from the Times-Picayune Special Report on June 23, 2002, which said that the levees in New Orleans were not strong enough to handle category 4 or category 5 hurricanes. The other big media, NBC, also had concerns about the levees long before the calamity happened (Sylvester, 2007; Gerber in Pinkowski, 2008). The interesting part of the role of media was the different perspectives between the local and national levels of media. Local media, since they were also victims, tell the story about the suffering and survival of the people, while national media, such as the New York Times or Dallas Morning, “publish a regional and national perspective and were instrumental in keeping the country interested in displaced people from the Gulf Coast” (Sylvester, 2007).
Lapindo mud Since May 29, 2006, hot mud has been spurting at up to 150,000 cubic meters per day at Sidoarjo, East Java, Indonesia (Normile, 2007). The hot mud has covered four villages, killed thirteen people, and displaced fi fty thousand inhabitants in the villages (Daily News, 2008). The location of the mud explosion is right in the center of the main transportation route of the East Java province. This disaster has disrupted the connection of the southern part and the eastern part of the province to the northern part. Therefore, the victims of the disaster are not only people who live in the location of disaster, but also people who live in the south and east part of the province. For example, from Surabaya (the capital of the province) to Malang (the second-largest city in the province), before the disaster it only took 1.5 hours driving, but now it could take more than four hours. “The disaster has been happening for two years, but the transportation problem is still the same, the hot mud still spurting, more sadly, thousands of people still live in tents” (Normile, 2008).
For the Lapindo mud explosion in East Java, Indonesia, there are two things that made this disaster unique. The first is this kind of disaster is very rare—volcanic mud spurting from the ground without any clear explanation. Second, regarding the unclear explanation of the cause, since the beginning there has been no agreement whether it is a natural or man-made disaster. Therefore, the policy actions and crisis management have been controversial.
Geologists all around the world have not yet clearly figured out the cause of this disaster. Richard Davies from Durham University said that a gas well from Lapindo Brantas Inc. is the cause. Some Indonesian scientists argued that it was caused by a magnitude 6.3 earthquake at Yogyakarta (280 km from the location) two days before the spurting started. This theory is refuted by Michael Manga, a geologist from Berkeley University, who said that the earthquake was too far and too small to cause this sort of phenomenon. On the other hand, Adriano Mazzini, a geologist from Oslo University, criticizes the scientists (Davies and Manga) who have never gone to the location. Mazzini said that either the earthquake (natural) or Lapindo Inc.’s mistakes (man-made) are still possibilities. Finally, James Mori, a seismologist from Tokyo University, says researchers cannot determine whether the volcano would have formed without drilling (Normile, 2008). However, an Indonesian court has ruled that this disaster is a natural disaster not caused by Lapindo Inc.’s mining activity. This decision has raised controversy since the majority shareholder of the company is Aburizal Bakrie, who is also the minister of welfare of Indonesia and a very influential elite of the Golkar Party, which is one of the largest political parties in the country.
The answer to the question of whether or not the crisis could become a triggering opportunity for improvement of the system is obviously no. The neighborhood has already been buried with mud, and there is no way to bring back the people to their houses and rebuild the area. It is already hard for government to control the stream of the mud flood, not to mention to drain the five meters of frozen mud from the villages. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, three years after the disaster started, thousands of victims still live in tents.
The role of government in this case is actually quite problematic. It is unclear whether or not to declare that the disaster is Lapindo Inc.’s responsibility or declare it a national natural disaster (so the government is held accountable). This position became more complicated when many people tried to connect this problem with political issues. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) in the early part of 2007 had ordered Lapindo Inc. to pay $420 million. From that order, it seemed that President SBY was quite sure that the cause of the disaster was the gas well of Lapindo Inc. But then the Indonesian court ruled that it is a natural disaster. All aspects of the disaster came under the government’s responsibility with this move.
The central government formed a national body called “Badan Penanggulangan Lumpur Sidoarjo” (BPLS) on September 8, 2007, whose main duty is to handle all impacts of this volcanic mud spurt (Petroleum Watch, 2008). Along this line, the provincial-level government made a plan to actually deal with crisis. There are three actions that the provincial government will focus on, which are stemming the fl ow, minimizing social impact, and reducing environmental destruction. All of the details of these main goals were also well explained in the action plan document (UNDAC, 2006).
It is difficult to categorize this disaster into crises’ typology, for there are no such typologies that it can be fi t into because the beginning of the volcanic mud spurting was fast, but the explosion is still going on more than two years later (150,000 cubic meters per day). However, regardless of the many aspects that make this disaster unique, it seems that “slow burning” is the closest type to the crisis. Therefore, government actually have had quite enough time to rule based on analytical decision-making strategy in terms of coping with this crisis. Though, it does not mean that government has to spend three years only to give compensation to the victims. By April 2009, government still could not find the agreement of compensation between BPLS, Lapindo Inc., and the victims (Kompas, 2009). As a result, thousands of people will still live in tents for quite a while without clear certainty of the future.
The role of CSOs in this crisis can be categorized in several ways. An Indonesian NGO that engages in environmental issues, WALHI, fi led a suit against Lapindo Inc., demanding that the company take responsibility (Normile, 2008). Mass organizations and people around the area help the victims by providing food and nonfood necessities (UNDAC, 2006). Local communities and the victims, with some help from outsider activists, organize themselves, especially to push government and the company to give them compensation. This showed how significant a role the civil society played, although there are not yet positive results of this effort.
The media also did not help much in this crisis management. In fact, the biggest local media, Jawa Pos, and the largest national-level media, Kompas, do not publish articles about this disaster intensively anymore. The public seems to have forgotten about the disaster already. Apparently, there are still thousands of people who suffer every single day, and have been for more than two years. The media acts only based on market demand, so after a while their audience gets bored and they have to find another issue to write about. The absence of this media consistency does not help for crisis recovery, especially for the victims who are asking for justice.
The role of international donors has only been by experts, those who have done research about the cause of the disaster, and technical assistance from the U.N. On June 20, 2008, the Indonesian Ministry of Environment made a request for technical assistance to the United Nations Office of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and then OCHA deployed a United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team from June 25 to July 6, 2006. The governments of Switzerland and the Netherlands provided the experts for this follow-up mission. Besides those institutions, there are no international institutions at all that help victims and provide basic needs. “No international organizations have been involved in the response activities of this disaster” (UNDAC, 2006).
Conclusion
These two cases (Katrina and Lapindo mud) prove that it is true that crises challenge basic structures and values of society. Hurricane Katrina displaced 1.2 million people, while Lapindo mud caused fi fty thousand people to lose their land and properties. Both cases have taken a long time to move toward the precrisis situations and recover. This poor management of crisis occurred in the first case in a very wealthy country, and in the second in a developing country. Therefore, practitioners need to improve their skills to cope with crises, especially in public administration. The need to study crisis management more deeply is clear.
In the sense of typology of crisis, Hurricane Katrina fell into “long shadow” disaster typology because the speed of crisis development was fast and the speed of crisis termination has been slow. It is difficult to categorize the Lapindo mud case into any crisis type, but “slow-burning” seems to be the closest one. By this categorization, it seems that government has had plenty of time to react, because none of them fall into “fast-burning” crisis. However, it does not mean that the crises were easier to cope with. The cases studies provide very good examples of failures of crisis management even though the nature of the crisis did not give both governments severe time pressure.
Government has played an important role in both cases. In the Katrina case, FEMA had been politicized, and it affected the bad performance of the institution during the crisis. In the Lapindo mud case, political nuance appeared because Aburizal Bakrie, as majority shareholder of the company, is one of the most influential political leaders in the country. Another aspect of crisis politicization results from the fact that the crisis is very politically attractive, as it gets a great deal of attention from the public. Politicization of the crises only resulted from the bad learning process of the two governments, as shown by the slow rehabilitation process, which after more than two years has not allowed recovery to precrisis condition. Therefore, in the future government has to avoid politicization of a crisis, no matter how attractive the crisis is for lifting up the political popularity of certain parties.
The role of media is quite different in both cases. In the Lapindo mud case, the media only perceives the disaster like regular news—after the audience got bored with the issue, the media stopped publishing this news even though the problem is not solved yet. In the Katrina case, the media gave good contributions, not only motivating a better recovery process, but also the media were actively giving warning long before the crisis happened. In this context, the Katrina case is the best practice that media should follow.
The role of CSOs in the Katrina case was interesting because there was a variation of contributions among some kinds of CSOs. NGOs and religious groups contributed very well in providing basic needs to the victims, while local communities, the stronger ones, tended to be resistant to certain crisis response programs. Nevertheless, in both cases, there was no good community-based disaster management (CBDM) implemented. In the future, the involvement of CSOs in crisis management should enable local communities to become directly involved in the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of crisis public policy.
As reported by UNDAC (2006), there has been no aid at all from international institutions in the Lapindo mud case, which is very different from the Hurricane Katrina case, where there was much aid from international institutions (more than one billion dollars) even though government (FEMA) failed in coordinating them. It might be true that in man-made crises (such as in the Lapindo mud case) the parties who cause the crises should be held accountable, so international institutions do not need to take part. However, completely ignoring the case is not the right decision to make. The very limited attention of international institutions in crisis, such as what has been happening in the Lapindo mud case, should not happen in the future.
FADILLAH PUTRA earned his second master’s degree in Local Government and Economic Development at LBJ School of Public Affairs The University of Texas at Austin, in August 2009. In January 2001, he earned a Master’s of Public Administration degree at the Post Graduate School of Brawijaya University in Indonesia and also received a Bachelor of Public Administration degree at the same university in September 1998. He has written six books on the topics of public administration, public policy, and local government in Indonesia. Since 2000, he has been actively engaged in NGO activities related to local government capacity building, poverty reduction, and democratization. He was awarded a grant from International Fellowship Program (IFP) of the Ford Foundation in August 2006.
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