ABSTRACT

This paper examines the thorny issue of authority and legitimacy in relation to ‘outsider’ emergency volunteering within the context of the community resilience policy agenda. Outsider emergency volunteering is any volunteering that: (a) aims to assist communities in any aspect of disaster preparedness, response, relief and recovery, and (b) is not registered with or under the direction of a formally recognised emergency management organisation (EMO). Hence, it does not have clear grounds to establish its authority and legitimacy within the formal authorising environment of the emergency management sector. The paper draws on co-production theory to examine how three important challenges for establishing authority and legitimacy were navigated in four Australian cases of co-production involving outsider emergency volunteering. Given the rise of resilience in disaster policy and the changing nature of volunteering in modern society, the very formalised and defined foundations of authority and legitimacy in emergency management will need to soften and expand to become more networked and distributed. The four cases described here shed some light on what softer and expanded foundations for authority and legitimacy can look like and the processes that can support them in the emergency management context.

摘要

本文研究了社区弹性政策议程中与“外部”紧急志愿者相关的权威和合法性的棘手问题。外部人员紧急志愿服务是指以下任何一项志愿服务：（a）旨在协助社区进行备灾，响应，救灾和灾后恢复的任何方面，并且（b）未在正式认可的紧急情况管理组织（EMO）或未得到其正式指导的情况下进行注册。因此，它没有明确的理由在应急管理部门的正式授权环境中确立其权威和合法性。本文利用共同生产理论来考察在涉及外部紧急志愿者的四个澳大利亚共同生产案例中，如何克服建立权威和合法性的三个重要挑战。鉴于灾害政策的抵御能力增强以及现代社会中志愿服务的性质不断变化，应急管理中非常正式和明确的权威和合法性基础将需要软化和扩展，以变得更加网络化和分布化。此处描述的四个案例阐明了在权限管理和合法性方面看起来更软，更扩展的基础是什么样的，以及在紧急管理环境中可以为它们提供支持的过程。