The long‐term development of crisis management in China—Continuity, institutional punctuations and reforms

Abstract

AbstractThis study focuses on the long‐term development of crisis management on the central level in China. Drawing on archival and interview data, it describes and analyzes how governance capacity and the formal structure of crisis management have changed, but also how culturally based legitimacy has altered over the past seventy years. These processes of change are divided into three phases, punctuated by institutional shifts in the history of crisis management institutions, whereby both vertical and horizontal coordination have become stronger over time. Crisis management in China is a legacy of traditional disaster management. In this respect it is different from the West, where crisis management has its origins in civil defense. We argue that each reform element is blended with traditional practices in an ever more complex combination, producing hybrid reform patterns. We conclude that centralization and a government‐centered approach in the institutional history can explain the high short‐term mobilization capacity and the challenges of communication in Chinese crisis management.