Extreme climate events and related disasters are increasing both in frequency and intensity. Resulting impacts materialize in the form of devastating bushfires, flooding, hurricanes, and cyclones and bring with them the tragic loss of life and substantial loss and damage to phenomena of value. Disaster management plays a central role in attempting to minimize and manage these impacts, and many government institutions posit that shared responsibility with citizens is the most effective approach to achieve this. However, some scholarship contends that shared approaches preference responsibility too far towards citizens and too far away from government institutions and are ineffective in lessening and managing such impacts. Here, we analyze governmental inquiries and actions undertaken regarding three past catastrophic disasters—2005 Hurricane Katrina (USA), the 2009 Victorian Bushfires (Australia), and the 2011 Queensland Floods (Australia). We assess, across these inquiries, 'what went wrong', 'what was working', and 'what needs fixing' with shared responsibility in disaster management. Our results indicate pervasive ineffectiveness in leadership, governance, trust, and resilience. We discuss how neoliberal influence contributes towards this ineffectiveness and suggest how this influence can be actively contested. We conclude by advocating for a reinstated social contract that inserts citizen rights and justice into disaster management policy making concomitant with the redistribution of public and third sector resources administered through inclusive governance frameworks. Such a social contract affords citizens greater opportunity to exercise agency whilst maximizing institutional support before, during, and after a disaster to provide greater protection and reduce harm.

极端气候事件和相关灾害的频率和强度都在增加。由此产生的影响以毁灭性的丛林大火、洪水、飓风和旋风的形式出现，并带来悲惨的生命损失以及对价值现象的重大损失和破坏。灾害管理在尝试最小化和管理这些影响方面发挥着核心作用，许多政府机构认为与公民分担责任是实现这一目标的最有效方法。然而，一些学者争辩说，共享方法对公民的偏好责任太远，离政府机构太远，在减轻和管理这种影响方面是无效的。这里，我们分析了政府对过去三场灾难性灾难——2005 年卡特里娜飓风（美国）、2009 年维多利亚丛林大火（澳大利亚）和 2011 年昆士兰洪水（澳大利亚）的调查和采取的行动。我们通过这些调查评估“出了什么问题”、“什么有效”和“什么需要修复”，并在灾害管理中分担责任。我们的研究结果表明，在领导力、治理、信任和弹性方面普遍缺乏效率。我们讨论了新自由主义影响如何导致这种无效，并建议如何积极对抗这种影响。最后，我们倡导恢复社会契约，将公民权利和正义纳入灾害管理政策制定，同时通过包容性治理框架管理公共和第三部门资源的重新分配。这种社会契约为公民提供了更多的机会来行使代理权，同时在灾难之前、期间和之后最大限度地提供机构支持，以提供更大的保护并减少伤害。