Is there coercion in local emergency management policy implementation?

Abstract

American governance in the twenty-first century continues down a path of enhanced coercion and direction from the federal government. Emergency management policy is no different from any other policy field in this aspect, especially in the time following the September 11 attacks. Throughout the Obama administration, the federal government continued these policies and created additional mandates that required local compliance with federal policy demands. Failure to do so would put grant funding at risk in a field where budgets are typically stretched to the limit. However, an earlier study by Hildebrand (J Homeland Secur Emerg Manag 12(2):273–298, 2015) showed that this coercive threat had no statistical significance in predicting the reported implementation behaviors of local emergency management officials during the George W. Bush administration. This study seeks to determine if attitudes of local emergency managers changed during the Obama administration, and if the potential impacts from coercion had any predictive effect upon the local agencies decision to implement policy demands from the National Response Framework (NRF), National Incident Management System (NIMS), and Incident Command System (ICS). The findings once again show that coercive threats (the potential loss of grant funding) play little-to-no role in the actions and attitudes of local emergency management professionals when reporting compliance with federal policy demands.