Governing resilience

Abstract

This dissertation examines why political jurisdictions - including countries, sub-national divisions (i.e., states, provinces, and departments), and communities - exhibit different levels of vulnerability to disasters even when affected by the same hazards. One common features of disasters, such as hurricanes, is that even though they may impact multiple countries or political divisions within the same country, their effect across these countries in terms of measures such as disaster related mortality or even the proportion of the population affected varies widely. The key to understanding why this variation exists lies in understanding the determinant processes at play at different levels of government. As such, the three component articles of this dissertation attempt to explain this variation using different indicators of disaster impact and at different levels of government. The first article, "The Role of State Capacity and Democracy in Shaping Disaster Outcomes", examined how state capacity impacts disaster mortality across countries with varying levels of democracy. It showed that in countries with lower levels of democracy, greater state capacity led to lower levels of disaster mortality. On the other hand, in countries with higher levels of democracy, greater state capacity correlated with higher levels of disaster mortality. To arrive at these findings, this article utilized a series of regression models that analyzed the relationship between state capacity and disaster mortality, conditional on level of democracy, while controlling for the effect of economic conditions and geography, with data from 214 countries between 1984 and 2019. The second article, "Sub-National Determinants of Disaster Vulnerability", probed what characteristics of sub-national political divisions (i.e., states, provinces, and departments) play a role in determining the proportion of the population impacted by disasters. It showed that greater access to electricity and cell phones - proxies for dependence on highly centralized infrastructure networks - correlated with larger proportions of the population suffering the impacts of disasters. Access to home phones - a proxy for wealth - was found to have a negative relationship with the proportion of the population impacted by disasters. This paper used a combination of spatial analysis and regression models, with data on demographics, education, and access to physical infrastructure. The final article, "Relationships as the Key Determinant of Informal Settlement Sustainability" looked at why informal settlements can persist adjacent to non-precarious formal settlements. It showed that clientelist relationships between elected officials and residents of informal settlements, economic ties between residents of formal and informal settlements, and a lack of capacity in the bureaucracy to address the issue of informal settlements were the key drivers of the sustainability of these settlements. This article focused on the case of three communities in Kingston, Jamaica - one informal settlement and two adjacent formal settlements - using a series of interviews, surveys, content analysis, and rapid visual assessment to arrive at its findings. The common trend identified in these papers is that government policy combined with state capacity to play a role in determining disaster outcomes. They did so by shaping the physical and economic environment around citizens, which in turn impacted their exposure and their ability to cope with disasters. With these findings come a series of policy recommendations on steps that governments can take to reduce the vulnerability of their citizens to disasters. --Author's abstract