Thinking the Unthinkable: The Limits of Traditional Crisis Management and the Necessity for New Approaches

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Thinking the Unthinkable The Limits of
Traditional Crisis Management and the Necessity
for New Approaches

• Arjen Boin, Ph.D.
• School of Governance, Utrecht University
• Public Administration Institute, Louisiana State
  University

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Outline

• Introduction
• Future Shocks and Transboundary Crises
• The Challenges of Transboundary Crisis Management
• Implications for Institutional Design

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The New World of Crisis

• Chernobyl, Kobe, Mad Cows, Canadian Ice Storms,
  Buenos Aires blackout, 9/11, SARS, Asian tsunami,
  Hurricane Katrina, China Earthquake (2008) H1N1
  flu epidemic Financial crisis, BP oil spill,
  Icelandic Ash, Fukushima EHEC

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Defining Transboundary Crises

• We speak of a transboundary crisis when the
  functioning of multiple, life-sustaining systems
  or critical infrastructures is acutely threatened
  and the causes of failure remain unclear.

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Characteristics of TC

• Transboundary crises
• Pose an urgent threat to core values, critical
  infrastructures
• Bring deep uncertainty Causes are not clear,
  unpredictable trajectory
• Cross geographic and functional boundaries
• Challenge governmental structures No ownership
• Generate periods of intense politicization
• Play up tensions between public and private

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Increased Frequency Driving Trends

1. Changing threat agents
2. Increased societal vulnerability

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Increased societal vulnerability

• Growing complexities and interdependencies
• Heightened mobility
• Changing societal and political climate
• Urbanization
• Concentration of assets

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Changing Threat Agents

• (Bio) Technology jumps
• New forms of terrorism
• Climate change
• Global power shifts

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Paradoxes

• While public leaders can do less to prevent
  crises, they are increasingly held responsible.
  But they often do not know what to do (or what
  the public expects of them).
• Trends increase vulnerability of modern
  societies, while increasing crisis management
  capacity (more can be done than ever before).

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In Summary

• Prevention is hard if not impossible
• New forms of adversity are likely
• Failure is not an option (politically, socially
  and economically)
• Government is not geared towards dealing with
  transboundary crises
• What does that mean for crisis management?

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Key analytical distinctions

• Operational v. Strategic
• Routine Emergencies v. Unimaginable Crises
• Localized v. Transboundary Threats

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Critical constraints

• The symbolic need for a command control myth
• The institutional vulnerability of modern
  mega-cities
• The culture of the risk society
• The politics of crisis management

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Challenges for Strategic Crisis Management

• Preparing in the face of indifference
• Making sense of crisis developments
• Managing large response networks
• Meaning making Whats the story?
• Accountability Restoring trust after crisis

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Task 1 Preparing for Crisis

• The costs of permanent preparedness
• Planning vs flexibility
• The politics of preparedness

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Task 2 Sense-making

• The crucial question How to recognize a crisis?
• Answer Its surprisingly hard.

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Why sense-making is hard

• We lack the knowledge and tools to understand,
  map, and track TBCs
• Information has to be shared across
  organizational, sectoral, and geographical
  boundaries
• Psychological factors limit individual and group
  capacity to recognize and grasp Black Swans

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Task 3 Managing large response networks

• Working with limited information
• Making critical decisions in authority vacuum
• Communicating to a confused and distrustful
  public
• Coordinating across borders

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Task 4 Meaning-making

• Whats the story? Reducing public and political
  uncertainty
• Bush after 9/11 v. Bush after Katrina
• Core claim its not about the true story, its
  about the best communicated story
• It is hard to explain a TBC without undermining
  the legitimacy of complex, interdependent systems

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Task 5 Crisis termination

• Crisis It aint over till its over (Katrina)
• Operational termination v. political closure
• Key lesson political closure depends on
  accountability dynamics
• How to organize accountability across boundaries?

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A Challenge of Design?

• Rise of transboundary crises
• Impossible crisis management challenges
• Bounded bureaucracies not designed to deal with
  crises, certainly not for the crises of the 21st
  century
• What needs to be done?

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Institutional Design Options

• Building resilient societies
• Building transboundary crisis management
  capacity
• Supranational
• Inter-agency

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The Promise of Resilience

• Resilience the magical solution
• Modernization undermines and facilitates
  resilience
• Primary condition trust (social capital)

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Resilience The Feasible Option

• Rapid recombination of available resources by
• Citizens
• First-line responders
• Operational leaders
• Requires reconceptualization of crisis leadership

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Leadership for Resilience

• Support and facilitate emerging resilience
• Organize outside forces
• Explain what is happening
• Initiate long-term reconstruction
• Bottom line Immediate relief is not an option

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Engineering resilience A leadership
responsibility

• Basic response mechanisms in place
• Training potential responders (how to think for
  themselves)
• Continuous exercising
• Planning as process
• Create mobile units media-style
• Prepare for long-term aftermath
• Create (international) expert network

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Creating Dynamic Capacity

• Shared cognition
• Surge capacity
• Networked coordination
• Formal boundary-spanning structures

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1. Shared cognition

• Detection/surveillance systems
• Analytical capacity
• Real-time communication
• Decision support systems

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2. Transboundary Surge Capacity

• Professional first responders (who can operate
  across boundaries)
• Supply chain management
• Fast-track procedures
• Integrated command center

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3. Networked coordination

• Shared language
• Known partners, mutual knowledge
• A culture of collaboration
• Mutual trust

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National Incident Management System (NIMS)

• Builds on successes of ICS (developed for and by
  the fire-fighting community)
• Offers a shared structure, professional language,
  way of working
• Built around defined authority relations,
  functional organization, modular approach
• Rapidly institutionalized across the US (Katrina
  v. Gustav)

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NIMS Fit for TBCs?

• Designed for local events, dealt with by
  local/regional response organizations
• ICS has not been systematically evaluated
  (effectiveness remains unproven)
• Military/uniformed character
• Unclear how ICS can be used during TBCs such as
  epidemics, terrorist attacks or financial crises

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4. Formal boundary-spanning structures

• Defining authority
• Rules for collaboration, sharing resources
• Rules and mechanisms for up and down-scaling
• Rules for initiation and termination

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U.S. National Response Framework (2008)

• Defines responsibilities, structures and
  procedures for large-scale disasters
• All hazards approach
• Strategic perspective

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US Response Structures and Principles

• All disasters are local
• The state is the primary actor
• Feds can help, but only if the states want it
• NRF prescribes procedures for requesting help and
  scaling up
• Embrace of NIMS

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NRF Pros and Cons

• Concerted effort to define responsibilities
• Formally sound
• Sound policy for training and practice
• But
• All difficult problems are placed at the state
  level
• Not always clear who is in charge
• No attention for international dimension of TBC

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What does the EU have available?

• An unnoticed success story
• A wide variety of capacities (mechanisms, venues,
  agencies)
• Recent developments The Solidarity Clause,
  Reorganization of Commission DGs (Internal
  Security, EEAS, strengthening of ECHO) Erasing
  of Internal-external divide

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EU Advantages

• Wide range of competences
• Strong on civilian capacities
• Skilled at cooperation and coordination
• Trusted venues
• Single contact point
• Set to grow

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EU Disadvantages

• Incomplete, fragmented competences
• Unclear political commitment politics will
  affect CM
• Leadership is a hot potato
• Communication is difficult multiculturalism

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In summary Future design challenges

• More TBCs are likely
• Contemporary government structures are ill suited
• Needed TBCM capacity enhanced resilience
• Required (Re)design of institutions

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Thank you!