Preparing Political Science for Disaster PDF

APSA | COMPARATIVE POLITICS THE ORGANIZED SECTION IN COMPARATIVE POLITICS OF THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION BACK TO SUMMARY PREPARING POLITICAL SCIENCE FOR DISASTER by Valerie de Koeijer and Sarah E. Parkinson Valerie de Koeijer is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Political Science,...

APSA | COMPARATIVE POLITICS THE ORGANIZED SECTION IN COMPARATIVE POLITICS OF THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION BACK TO SUMMARY PREPARING POLITICAL SCIENCE FOR DISASTER by Valerie de Koeijer and Sarah E. Parkinson Valerie de Koeijer is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins Universty. Her email is [email protected]. Sarah E. Parkinson is the Aronson Assistant Professor of International Studies and Political Science, Johns Hopkins University. Her email is [email protected]. As climate change intensifies, extreme weath- As a broad subject of inquiry, disaster serves er events’ frequency will increase on a global as a lens onto core political relationships and scale. Processes such as deforestation and ero- processes. That is: “disaster provides a revealsion will expose more people, property, and re- ing moment of transparent, raw clarity into sources to threats such as floods and landslides. social realities which are otherwise obscured” Development trends mean that more people will (Venugopal and Yasir 2017, 425, see also Elliott live and work in inadequateand Pais 2006, 296). A fuller ly-regulated construction and integration of disaster studtraverse poorly-built or decayies into comparative politics Disaster serves as a ing infrastructure. As a result, opens intellectual space for many populations are increas- lens onto core political political scientists interested relationships and ingly vulnerable to disasters,1 in contributing new analytiwhich disproportionately afprocesses. cal insights on issues such as fect lower- and middle-income race and ethnicity, migration, countries as well as people livparticipatory politics, conflict, gender, law, and ing in poverty and people of color living in high-ininequality while also highlighting issues of critcome countries (Davies et al. 2018; Cutter and ical public concern and relevance. In this vein, Finch 2008; IPCC 2012). Disasters of any origin are deeply political (Olson 2000), shaping, for we first identify three core trends in the extant example, electoral processes and amplifying ra- politics of disaster literature: 1) studies that excial and ethnic inequalities. Politics determine amine the effects of natural disaster on public whether a population can cope with an “extreme opinion and trust in government; 2) research weather event” or, conversely, whether a commu- that explores how disasters influence conflict; nity is “struck by disaster.” That is, ostensibly “nat- and 3) scholarship that evaluates disaster govural” disasters (henceforth: disasters) occur due ernance. Second, building on interdisciplinary to policies (or lack thereof), not due to unavoid- literature in disaster studies, we suggest both able environmental processes (Stivers 2007, trajectories for future research and note poten49–50; Gould, Garcia, and Remes 2016). tial challenges that comparativists may face. 1. Disasters are events that cause large-scale infrastructural and environmental damage, significant socio-economic disruption, and mass casualties (J. Xu et al. 2016). APSA-CP Newsletter Vol. XXX, Issue 2, Fall 2020 page 100 PREPARING POLITICAL SCIENCE FOR DISASTER ( CONTINUED ) Public opinion, blame, and trust in government The effects of disaster on voting patterns and public opinion are one of the most developed areas of disaster politics research. While much of this research has been conducted in the US context, there is significant potential for its further development in the comparative realm. For instance, a finding that constituencies reward US elected officials for assistance post-disaster, but not for money spent on preparing their communities to better withstand disasters’ effects, may be of particular importance to test comparatively, given the implications for casualties, damage, and subsequent blame associated with lack of preparation (Healy and Malhotra 2009). Scholars have also identified numerous dynamics that affect post-disaster voting behavior and public opinion: media’s role in framing disaster outcomes and shaping emotional responses to them (Atkeson and Maestas 2012); interactions between prior partisanship and disaster exposure (Heersink et al. 2020; Hazlett and Mildenberger 2020); and assignment of responsibility to local governments for preparation and/or damage (Malhotra and Kuo 2008). Gasper and Reeves (2011) find that post-disaster damage is negatively related to voting for incumbents, while requests to declare the event a disaster have a positive effect on state governors, and, when granted, on US presidents as well. There is immense potential for comparativists to expand these themes to more diverse contexts, approaches, and questions, especially in varying regime and governance contexts. For example, Grossman (2020b) argues that emergency declarations—usually necessary for international aid to be deployed—are not automatic. Rather, they are the products of both facts on the ground and of states’ strategic political decisions vis-à-vis domestic politics. Carlin et. al. (2014) examine how Chile’s 2010 earthquake and tsunami shaped public opinion, finding that personally suffering damage had a negative effect on people’s support for democratic institutions and practices. Focusing on a series of wildfires in Russia, Lazarev et. al. (2014) argue that people who were affected by the fires and received assistance from the government showed higher levels of support for Putin’s regime. Yet, researchers should also extend the bases for comparison far beyond voting behavior, public opinion, trust, and blame. For example, examining when political parties adopt preparedness to their platforms or push preparedness when in office might offer broader insight into how political parties conceive of and use narrative to frame their disaster-related efforts and to perform accountability (Sorace 2016). Disaster and Conflict A significant portion of comparative scholarship on disaster addresses potential relationships between disasters and conflict.2 Nel and Righarts (2008), for example, find that natural disasters have a statistically significant, positive effect on the risk of intrastate conflict, particularly in low- and middle-income countries with low economic growth, high inequality, and mixed political regimes. Brancati (2007) similarly finds that high-magnitude earthquakes lead to intrastate violence due to resultant resource scarcity. This effect is greater in areas 2. This line of inquiry is closely related to the literature that links climate change to armed conflict (Mach et al. 2019; Hendrix and Glaser 2007; Hendrix and Salehyan 2012; J. Xu et al. 2016). There is still extensive debate regarding the links between climate change and specific wars, e.g., the Syrian Civil War (Châtel 2014; Kelley et al. 2015; Selby 2020; Selby et al. 2017). APSA-CP Newsletter Vol. XXX, Issue 2, Fall 2020 page 101 PREPARING POLITICAL SCIENCE FOR DISASTER ( CONTINUED ) with higher population density and lower GDP per capita. However, opposite findings also exist. Bergholt and Lujala (2012) argue that while climate-related disaster negatively affects economic growth, it does not lead to an increase in conflict. Slettebak (2012) likewise finds that countries affected by natural disaster are at a lower risk of civil war. Scholars who leverage in-depth, qualitative, case study research present nuanced pictures of the mechanisms that link disaster to conflict dynamics. Their work points to complex processes generated by the combination of disaster and conflict, indicating a future need to parse such dynamics with methodological care and contextual awareness. Mampilly (2009) finds that a post-disaster spike in foreign aid in Sri Lanka following the 2004 tsunami rendered the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) increasingly reliant on flows of overseas aid, which undermined the group’s cooperation with the Sri Lankan government and fueled further violence. Other research questions why natural disaster exacerbates or potentially causes conflict in some cases, but mitigates it in others. Comparing conflicts in Sri Lanka and Indonesia post-tsunami, Beardsley and McQuinn (2009) find that rebel groups’ perceived return on investment and territorial investments shape the relationship between natural disaster and conflict. This dynamic, they contend, helps to explain a successful peace process in Aceh, versus the conflict escalation witnessed in eastern Sri Lanka. in comparative politics. Specialized disaster response agencies often work extensively with public actors such as health and infrastructure ministries as well as civil society and private corporations. Disaster governance is thus embedded in broader institutional structures, serving as a lens onto overarching comparative political processes. Extant case study research on disaster governance and its aftermath hints at the depth of these dynamics by examining, for example, events such as Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines (Howe and Bang 2017; Salazar 2015), the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China (P. Xu et al. 2014; B. Xu 2017; Sorace 2015; 2017; Gao 2019; 2020), the Indian Ocean tsunami in Indonesia and Sri Lanka (McGilvray and Gamburd 2013; Jauhola 2013) and Hurricane Matthew in Haiti (Marcelin, Cela, and Shultz 2016). This particular research thematic carries broad potential for policy-relevant research at the intersection of comparative politics and international relations. Specifically, it provides a lens through which to understand the interface between local politics, national governments, and the international community. Current work focuses tightly on relief outcomes: shifting political power to subnational rather than national level authorities carries positive effects (Tselios and Tompkins 2017) as do instances of co-production between national and local authorities (Dollery, Kinoshita, and Yamazaki 2019). These shifts also make disaster response more complex and can inhibit positive results (Srikandini, Hilhorst, and Voorst 2018). Disaster Governance The long-term effects of these interventions, Literature on disaster governance—that is, the politics they engender, and their unexpecton disaster risk reduction and management ed effects remain essential but unanswered by state and non-state actors (Tierney 2012, questions that should undergird a robust realm 342)—is also directly relevant to broad debates of inquiry. Of particular interest to comparativAPSA-CP Newsletter Vol. XXX, Issue 2, Fall 2020 page 102 PREPARING POLITICAL SCIENCE FOR DISASTER ( CONTINUED ) ists, there has been a push to shift from a topdown state-centered approaches to disaster governance to include more non-state and local state actors. While path-breaking literature on local-national-international dynamics in humanitarian response and peacebuilding exists (Jurkovich 2020; Autesserre 2010; Campbell 2018; Grossman 2020a; Lake 2018; 2017), the nature of rapid-onset disasters such as storms and tectonic events presents a new cluster of analytic puzzles that necessitate attention. Putting Disaster Into Relief These research threads provide a strong foundation for a more expansive study of disasters in comparative politics. However, these prospects also surface challenges. Disasters do not affect people or populations randomly (Wisner et al. 2004). Rather, their impacts are directly related to pre-existing vulnerabilities, that is, “the characteristics of a person or group and their situation that influence their capacity to anticipate, cope with, resist and recover from the impact of a natural hazard (an extreme natural event or process)” (Wisner et al 2004, 11). Policy, politics, and history shape vulnerability. They affect where people live and the quality of their homes; the ability to implement and enforce regulations; and politicians’ feelings of accountability to different populations. Twenty thousand children’s deaths in the 2008 Wenchuan, China earthquake, which collapsed hundreds of poorly-built government schools, were associated with a party system that incentivized big, quickly-built, local infrastructure projects (and thus corruption) in order for cadres to advance out of rural districts such as Wenchuan (Cary 2012).3 Disasters expose and deepen already existing cleavages rooted in racial and colonial legacies (Bonilla 2020). In Peru, politicians expressly ignored scientists’ warnings of an unstable mountainside above the now-obliterated, predominantly Quechua (indigenous) town of Yungay, where a landslide buried approximately 25,000 people following an earthquake in 1970. Black citizens were not randomly clustered in sub-par housing in Vanport, Oregon in 1948 that was swept away when a dike above the town burst (Geiling 2015); race covenants prohibited them from living in cities such as Portland where their homes would have been safe from inundation. These realities necessitate methodological innovation in a field that often relies on as-ifrandom strategies and exogenous shocks in research designs. However, this variation does imply potential for productive comparative subnational research (Giraudy, Moncada, and Snyder 2019; Snyder 2001) given wide variation in community-level vulnerabilities (Cutter and Finch 2008). In the United States, for example, communities of color are 50% more vulnerable to wildfires than white communities (Davies et al. 2018). The complexities of disaster-affected contexts also encourage the deployment of interpretive research designs (Yanow and Schwartz-Shea 2006; Wedeen 2010; 2002; Schaffer 2018) that leverage creative casing strategies (Soss 2018; Simmons and Smith Forthcoming) and lines of analytic sight (Pachirat 2011). Moreover, the technical and descriptive language associated with disasters and disaster response (e.g., “500-year storms” that occur every few years; the use of terms such as “act of God;” war metaphors) point to the leverage to be gained by both interpretive 3. We thank John Yasuda for helping us to clarify this point. APSA-CP Newsletter Vol. XXX, Issue 2, Fall 2020 page 103 PREPARING POLITICAL SCIENCE FOR DISASTER ( CONTINUED ) (Schaffer 1998; Scott 1990; Lakoff and Johnson 2003; Johnson 1995) and positivist (Lucas et al. 2015; King, Lam, and Roberts 2017; King, Pan, and Roberts 2013) research designs that focus on the role of language in politics and policy. Beyond the “Covid-19 opportunity” In comparison to other social science disciplines and interdisciplinary fields, political scientists have not extensively grappled with theoretical, methodological, or empirical approaches to studying disasters. Research trajectories in disaster politics share obvious synergies with research on environmental politics, public health and politics, and humanitarianism, and invite comparativists to examine core themes of race and ethnicity, economic inequality, gender, security, and migration in new ways. Political scientists can benefit immensely from interdisciplinary conversations as they delve further into these topics, as well as from US-centric scholarship that critically examines the broader politics surrounding events such as Hurricane Katrina (Marable and Clarke 2008; Stivers 2007; Elliott and Pais 2006; Frymer, Strolovitch, and Warren 2006). APSA-CP Newsletter Vol. XXX, Issue 2, Fall 2020 While the COVID-19 pandemic has sparked a wave of new research on topics that intersect with disaster politics (Lipscy 2020), there are also concerns that a narrow focus on pandemic-themed research will unduly restrict political scientists’ imaginations and grant opportunities (Christia and Lawson 2020). Bisoka (2020) emphasizes that thinking of “Covid-19 as an opportunity” (for example) masks colonial dynamics in knowledge production and encourages exploitative research practices that place local research teams at risk; others have emphasized pandemic and disaster research must necessarily examine the ethics of its timing, design, and data-gathering approaches (Bond, Lake, and Parkinson 2020). 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