Elsevier

Applied Geography

Volume 134, September 2021, 102520
Applied Geography

Does the shock of natural hazard-associated disasters affect the authority of regional governments?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2021.102520Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The occurrence of natural disasters is a signal for higher powers for regional governments.

  • An increase in the number of deaths drives higher decentralisation.

  • An increase in the number of total people affected leads to higher centralisation.

  • Regional and central governments could work together for an efficient disaster risk management.

Abstract

Using an econometric analysis, this paper examines whether natural hazard-associated disasters within a country affect the decision of the country to transfer authority to regional tiers of government. It finds that the occurrence of disasters is a signal for higher powers for regional governments, which is likely to denote that decentralisation and local Disaster Risk Management (DRM) are portrayed as a means of bringing government closer to ‘at-risk’ areas and citizens. An increase in the number of deaths drives higher decentralisation, while an increase in the number of total people affected leads to higher centralisation. It is suggested that regional governments could assert command over centralised government agencies for an efficient DRM, and vice versa.

Introduction

It is widely known that natural hazard-associated disasters (hereafter, natural disasters1) have devastating effects on economies and societies. These effects are usually localised, as natural hazards strike a local part of a country, and they are rarely national. Both central and sub-national (i.e. local and regional) governments are confronted with natural disasters. Central authorities prepare either the whole country or the vulnerable areas to prevent disasters, reduce vulnerability and exposure to disasters, and minimize the human and economic effects of disasters, while local and regional authorities aim to prevent local natural disasters, prepare for region-specific risks, and respond to the local effects of disasters. Authorities have responsibilities for the preparation of societies for lower disaster probability (risk) and, if a disaster happens, for fewer disaster-related effects. Although the distribution of central and regional responsibility and power in public decision-making, and thus the degree of (de)centralisation and the degree of the responsibilities above, differ from country to country, regional governments play a significant role in the prevention and management of natural disasters. Simultaneously, natural disasters can shape the authorities of regional governments. Due to the usually local impacts of natural hazards on a country, the central authority of the country may give higher responsibility and power to regional governments. Hence, there is a two-way relationship between natural disasters and regional governments. Not only what local policies could be used to reduce the disaster risk and the local effects of disasters, but also what happens to the authority of local governments after a natural disaster are major concerns for scientists.

Many scholars (e.g. Ainuddin et al., 2013; Bae et al., 2016; Chen, 2020; Clark-Ginsberg, 2020; Finucane et al., 2020; Garschagen, 2016; Grady et al., 2016; Imperiale & Vanclay, 2020; Lee, 2019; Marchezini, 2019) have already examined how natural disasters create the opportunity to transfer powers to local authorities as well as the barriers and drivers of localism during the natural disaster awareness, preparedness or recovery process, but they have focused on the particular cases of a country or a group of countries. For example, Ainuddin et al. (2013), using the case-study of Baluchistan in Pakistan and interviews with key actors in government and non-governmental organisations involved in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Disaster Risk Management (DRM) activities, find that disaster institutions are not yet fully implemented at the district and community levels, recommending ‘efficient preparedness and coordination of provincial and national level agencies to enhance community awareness and preparedness’ (page 50). Using evidence from government documents, media coverage and elite interviews, Bae et al. (2016) find that ‘South Korea simultaneously carried out both centralisation and decentralisation of disaster management, which are not contradictory but rather complementary’ (page 50). Chen (2020), using the case-study of New York state and econometric analysis of panel data, finds that ‘a local government's unreserved fund balance and disaster reserve significantly affect its financial condition, while financial condition indicators are not significantly impacted by natural disasters when the fiscal institution variables are controlled’ (page 22). Finally, Clark-Ginsberg (2020) uses social network analysis to compare the DRR networks in Kenya, Bangladesh and Sierra Leone, and points out that ‘while the number of organisations involved in DRR differs across these countries, local, national, and international governmental, nongovernmental, and private sector organisations are all involved in DRR’ (page 1).

The evidence from the cross-country studies is very limited. While only a few data-driven studies on the global scale have asked whether countries that are more decentralised have higher or lower disaster risk or disaster-related human effects (e.g. Escaleras & Register, 2012; Skidmore & Toya, 2013; Tselios & Tompkins, 2017, Tselios & Tompkins, 2020), to the best of our knowledge, no cross-country study has examined whether the shock of a natural disaster in a country has influenced the powers (authorities) of regional governments to implement policies. Using international databases for 81 countries over the period 1961–2010 and econometric analysis, this paper fills this significant gap by examining whether the occurrence of natural disasters within a country and their human impacts affect the decision of the country to transfer authority to subnational tiers of government, after controlling for some time-variant and time-invariant national and subnational economic, political and geographical characteristics; and whether this possible association differs by the degree of decentralisation and the size of disasters.

The present paper attempts to take a step forward from the current empirical studies by analysing on the global scale whether a natural disaster within a country (disaster propensity or intensity) is likely to affect the powers of regional governments in the country. Natural disasters may create challenges for higher or lower decentralisation, and thus the shocks of natural disasters may affect the division between the upper and the lower tiers of the government. This nourishes the debate on institutional reactions to and strategies for the radical events of disasters as well as the debate on the spatial scale of governance, because natural-disaster resilience is a function of a society's ability to react effectively to the shock of a natural disaster and can occur across a variety of spatial scales (Frazier, Thompson, et al., 2013). The question about what happens to the authority of regional governments after a natural disaster hits a country on a global scale, is connected with disaster recovery theories and theories of governance and institutions, as they take into consideration the post-disaster factors of the quality of governance systems, institutional capacity and civil society-state relationships (Tierney & Oliver-Smith, 2012).

Taking into account that the risks, vulnerabilities and impacts of disasters and decentralisation processes have increased globally during the period of analysis, it is important to examine whether there is any global association between natural disasters and decentralisation. This is a current and global topic, as the ‘Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030’ (UNISDR, 2015) places great importance on the role of local government in DRR by reducing the likelihood of a natural hazard becoming a disaster and by reducing the devastating human effects of disasters. These could be achieved though efficient DRM at all phases of a disaster: mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. Moreover, global climate change may increase the frequency and intensity of extreme natural hazard events in many areas, exacerbating socially, economically, politically and spatially differentiated sensitivities and exposure to these hazards (Sullivan-Wiley et al., 2019).

This empirical study lies in the intersection of the geography of natural disasters and the geography of politics, as it shares an interest in the politics of national and sub-national power, in scalar politics and in DRR and DRM. The study of the spatially uneven outcomes of political and institutional processes and the ways in which these processes are affected by natural disasters is related with the study of the spatially uneven shocks of natural disasters and the ways these shocks can affect DRR and DRM. This study is devoted to applied geography research, as it utilizes political, institutional and physical-geography approach to resolve the effects of natural disasters which have a spatio-political dimension, and it considers the interaction between the physical, human and political environments (Montz & Tobin, 2011).

This paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 discusses the theoretical underpinnings of the association between disasters and decentralisation. Section 3 presents the data, the variables and the econometric specifications used, and contains some relevant stylized facts to motivate the subsequent regression analysis of Section 4. The final section concludes and discusses the limits and policy implications of the results.

Section snippets

Decentralisation and DRM

The exogenous unpredictable shocks, such as the shocks of natural disasters, have questioned the compromise between economy, politics and society. Institutions try to counterbalance the shocking events of natural disasters and their devastating effects on society. They specify ex-ante and ex-post policy measures to minimize the risk and the effects of disasters. However, institutions can be either centralised or decentralised. Policymakers can choose among different sets of governance-structure

Data, variables and econometric specifications

We use international databases and econometric analysis to examine whether the decision of a country to transfer authority to regional tiers of government is affected by the occurrence and the human impacts of natural disasters within the country. Merging the databases, the analysis covers the 1961–2010 period for 81 countries.2

Regression results

Table 2 displays the regression results of equations (1), (2)).11 We use cluster-robust standard errors to control for arbitrary heteroscedasticity and intra-country correlation. We initially calculate the possible effects of disasters on RAI, SELF-RULE and SHARED-RULE (Regression 1–9), and then whether these effects are stronger or weaker: a) for

Conclusions

Using global data for 81 countries between 1961 and 2010 and econometric analysis, we find that the shock of natural disasters matters for the powers of local governments. More specifically, when a natural hazard becomes a disaster, it is a trigger for higher decentralisation and thus for higher local DRM. The human effects of disasters shape the powers of national and subnational governments, but this effect differs by the size of the disasters. An increase in the number of deaths is a factor

Author statement

Dear Editors.

Please find attached a third revised electronic version of my paper “Does the shock of natural hazard-associated disasters affect the authority of regional governments?” that I would like to submit for consideration by the Editorial Board of Applied Geography for the Special Issue on “Shocking events: institutional reactions to abrupt changes”.

I would like to inform you that.

  • 1.

    Declarations of interest: None.

  • 2.

    I am the only contributor to the paper using the relevant CRediT roles:

References (56)

  • M.A. Miller et al.

    Introduction: Decentralising disaster governance in urbanising Asia

    Habitat International

    (2016)
  • B.E. Montz et al.

    Natural hazards an evolving tradition in applied geography

    Applied Geography

    (2011)
  • M.F. Olwig

    Multi-sited resilience: The mutual construction of "local" and "global" understandings and practices of adaptation and innovation

    Applied Geography

    (2012)
  • K.A. Sullivan-Wiley et al.

    Mapping vulnerability: Opportunities and limitations of participatory community mapping

    Applied Geography

    (2019)
  • E.L. Tompkins et al.

    A less disastrous disaster: Managing response to climate-driven hazards in the Cayman Islands and NE Brazil

    Global Environmental Change-Human and Policy Dimensions

    (2008)
  • V. Tselios et al.

    What causes nations to recover from disasters? An inquiry into the role of wealth, income inequality, and social welfare provisioning

    International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction

    (2019)
  • V. Tselios et al.

    Can we prevent disasters using socioeconomic and political policy tools?

    International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction

    (2020)
  • A. Alesina

    The size of countries: Does it matter?

    Journal of the European Economic Association

    (2003)
  • B.H. Baltagi

    Econometric analysis of panel data

    (2005)
  • F. Briones et al.

    Local responses to disasters: Recent lessons from zero-order responders

    Disaster Prevention and Management

    (2019)
  • J.C. Brown et al.

    There's nothing inherent about scale: Political ecology, the local trap, and the politics of development in the Brazilian amazon

    Geoforum

    (2005)
  • L. Bull-Kamanga et al.

    From everyday hazards to disasters: The accumulation of risk in urban areas

    Environment and Urbanization

    (2003)
  • G. Chen

    Assessing the financial impact of natural disasters on local governments

    Public Budgeting & Finance

    (2020)
  • A. Clark-Ginsberg

    Disaster risk reduction is not 'everyone's business': Evidence from three countries

    International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction

    (2020)
  • S.L. Cutter et al.

    Social vulnerability to environmental hazards

  • P. Dardanelli

    Conceptualizing, measuring, and mapping state structures-with an application to western europe, 1950-2015

    Publius-the Journal of Federalism

    (2019)
  • S.N. Durlauf et al.

    The new empirics of economic growth

  • K.E. Engel et al.

    Resilience in talcahuano, Chile: Appraising local disaster response

    Disaster Prevention and Management

    (2019)
  • Cited by (0)

    View full text