Managing Disasters through PublicPrivate Partnerships
PUBLIC MANAGEMENT AND CHANGE SERIES
Beryl A. Radin, Series Editor
EDITORIAL BOARD
Robert Agranoff | William Gormley |
Michael Barzelay | Rosemary OLeary |
Ann OM. Bowman | Norma Riccucci |
H. George Frederickson | David H. Rosenbloom |
TITLES IN THE SERIES
Challenging the Performance Movement:
Accountability, Complexity, and
Democratic Values
Beryl A. Radin
Charitable Choice at Work: Evaluating
Faith-Based Job Programs in the States
Sheila Suess Kennedy and Wolfgang Bielefeld
Collaborating to Manage:
A Primer for the Public Sector
Robert Agranoff
The Collaborative Public Manager:
New Ideas for the Twenty-First Century
Rosemary OLeary and
Lisa Blomgren Bingham, Editors
The Dynamics of Performance Management:
Constructing Information and Reform
Donald P. Moynihan
Federal Management Reform in
a World of Contradictions
Beryl A. Radin
The Future of Public Administration around the World:
The Minnowbrook Perspective
Rosemary OLeary, David M. Van Slyke,
and Soonhee Kim, Editors
The Greening of the US Military:
Environmental Policy, National Security,
and Organizational Change
Robert F. Durant
High-Stakes Reform:
The Politics of Educational Accountability
Kathryn A. McDermott
How Information Matters:
Networks and Public Policy Innovation
Kathleen Hale
How Management Matters: Street-Level
Bureaucrats and Welfare Reform
Norma M. Riccucci
Implementing Innovation:
Fostering Enduring Change in Environmental
and Natural Resource Governance
Toddi A. Steelman
Managing within Networks:
Adding Value to Public Organizations
Robert Agranoff
Measuring the Performance of the Hollow State
David G. Frederickson and
H. George Frederickson
Organizational Learning at NASA:
The Challenger and Columbia Accidents
Julianne G. Mahler
with Maureen Hogan Casamayou
Program Budgeting and the Performance
Movement: The Elusive Quest for
Efficiency in Government
William F. West
Public Administration: Traditions of Inquiry
and Philosophies of Knowledge
Norma M. Riccucci
Public Values and Public Interest:
Counterbalancing Economic Individualism
Barry Bozeman
The Responsible Contract Manager: Protecting
the Public Interest in an Outsourced World
Steven Cohen and William Eimicke
Revisiting Waldos Administrative State:
Constancy and Change in Public Administration
David H. Rosenbloom and
Howard E. McCurdy
Managing Disasters through PublicPrivate Partnerships
Ami J. Abou-bakr
2013 Georgetown University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Abou-bakr, Ami J.
Managing disasters through public-private partnerships / Ami J. Abou-bakr.
p. cm. (Public management and change series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-58901-950-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Disaster reliefUnited States. 2. Emergency managementUnited States. 3. Public-private sector cooperationUnited States. I. Title.
HV555.U6A53 2013
363.3480973dc23
2012012671
This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
First printing
To J. R. G. and R.C. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
The Emergence of Disaster-Oriented PPPs
CHAPTER TWO
Assessing Disaster-Oriented PPPs
CHAPTER THREE
The Federal Reserve, a Strategic Alliance
CHAPTER FOUR
The War Industries Board, a Responsive Alliance
CHAPTER FIVE
Comparing the Frameworks and the Identity Crisis of Disaster-Oriented PPPs
TABLES
PREFACE
In 2010 and 2011 the world watched as an Icelandic volcano brought European air travel to a standstill, was horrified at the devastation caused by the earthquake in Haiti, and was appalled by the Tohoku earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in Japan. Disasters, be they caused by nature or man, occur and invariably affect the United States. The question is not, how can we stop disasters? For the most part, we cannot. The question is, how can we ensure that we are adequately prepared and sufficiently resilient to cope when disaster strikes our home, our neighborhood, or our country? The issues addressed in this book are applicable and directly relevant to a broad range of practitioners in government, the private sector, media, and academia (particularly academics in the fields of public policy and public administration). This book also proposes new ways of approaching disaster management given the global, interconnected world in which we live.
The events of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina demonstrated that the US government alone is not equipped to respond to disasters. Most of the physical and virtual networks we rely upon are owned and operated by private corporations. For example, after Katrina it was Walmart, not the government or law enforcement, who was the first responder, providing 2,498 trailers of emergency merchandise and $8.5 million to the relief effort. These crises focused national attention on the importance of cooperation between the government and the private sector and made it no longer a question of whether the private sector had a role to play in national security and disaster management, but a question of what that role should be, and how effective publicprivate partnerships (PPP) for these purposes could be established.
Where once government, military, and law enforcement took full responsibility for disaster mitigation and resiliency, 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina made two things apparent. First, private ownership of an estimated 85 percent of US critical infrastructure makes industry a significant stakeholder in critical infrastructure protection for the foreseeable future. Second, during disasters, the private sector demonstrated its constructive use and understanding of global networks, systems, and patterns as a means to enhance the speed of recovery efforts. With these realizations emerged a further awareness that as partners with government, the private sector may be able both to respond to physical events after they occur and to use this knowledge of networks and trade patterns to assist the US government in mitigating the impacts of future events.
A decade after 9/11, despite a widespread acknowledgment by both sectors that publicprivate collaborations for these purposes would be beneficial, significant barriers to cooperation persist that have limited their effectiveness on a federal level. This book attempts to assess disaster-oriented PPPs through December 2011 and aims to understand why these collaborations have proven so difficult and to determine whether they can be built to last.