Local government’s disaster management capacity and disaster resilience

ABSTRACT

The questions in this research are as follows: How does the disaster management capacity of local governments affect the disaster resilience of local communities? The research distinguished local communities by type according to their level of exposure to natural disaster hazards and the analysis compared the impact of the disaster management capabilities on disaster resilience by the type of natural disaster exposure. The analysis results are as follows: While the frequency of disasters local communities experience is low, the magnitude of disasters experienced is large; external network and manual had a positive effect on disaster resilience. When disaster frequency experienced by local communities is high, the magnitude of disasters experienced is small, and internal network and public relation contribute to increased disaster resilience. In conclusion, this research will help expand the externalities of disaster management discussed in the fields of public administration and policy.     

Being Strategic in Partnership – Interpreting Local Knowledge of Modern Local Government

Broad and international literature exists on networked governance which has both described and informed recent transformations in local government. Reforms in the UK have led to the development of strategic partnerships to join up services and solve wicked issues. In Scotland, these are referred to as Community Planning Partnerships. Evidence from numerous studies has highlighted the partial nature of this transformation, particularly around community engagement, with some of the pioneers of this work now questioning earlier assumptions. This article presents an interpretive policy analysis of strategic partnership in Scotland to add three themes to this literature. First, to demonstrate the historical contingency of ‘joined-up government’; second, to explore the practices and meanings used by policy actors to understand ‘strategic’ and ‘partnerships’. Finally, the article problematises strategic partnership working, suggesting that in and of itself it creates effective barriers to community empowerment and even engagement.     

Community Council Cooperation: The Lake Macquarie City Council Co-Governance Delegation Model

In its Better, Stronger Local Government, the Independent Local Government Review Panel (2012a, 2012b) advanced several claims regarding the performance of New South Wales (NSW) local government, including the supposed need for additional “sub-council” governance structures. This article argues that there is no need to “reinvent the wheel” in NSW local government by introducing additional “sub-council” structures since existing regulation already enables local authorities to engage in local co-governance. Using the example of the Lake Macquarie City Council (“LakeMac”) “delegation model,” the article shows that LakeMac has been successful in its endeavors to engage widespread community participation in co-governance to manage council facilities.     

Community resilience: a policy tool for local government?

In many countries, local government has been a prime target of austerity measures. In response, local authorities are exploring a new repertoire of policy approaches in a bid to provide more with less. In England, local authorities have been drawn to community resilience as a pragmatic response to the challenge of deploying shrinking resources to support communities exposed to social and economic disruption. This application of resilience thinking is not without its challenges. It demands a working definition of community resilience that recognises the potential for communities to prove resilient to shocks and disruptions, but avoids blaming them for their predicament. There is also the practical challenge of developing and targeting interventions to promote and protect resilience. This paper sets out to explore these issues and establish the potential utility of community resilience as a policy tool through case study analysis in the city of Sheffield.     

Single Outcome Agreements and Partnership Working in Scottish Local Government – Year One

Single Outcome Agreements (SOAs) are a mechanism that it is argued will deliver key national and local priorities based on a new relationship between central and local government in Scotland. SOAs are to be developed and implemented through partnership working exercised by Community Planning Partnerships (CPPs). A survey of the first (2008) SOA participants from local authorities and their Community Planning partners was conducted in 2008, with a particular focus on the interrelationships between the 2008 SOA development process and partnership working at the local level. Findings of this study suggest that there was a positive link between the strength of existing CPPs and partner engagement in the 2008 SOA development. However, partner engagement in the 2008 SOA development process did not affect survey respondents' confidence that the ongoing SOA development and implementation will strengthen partnership working in the long -term. This study also suggests that in addition to the practical difficulties such as limited time and staff resources, mistrust between local partners, and local players' scepticism about the central government's intention to free up local government may be barriers to the success of the SOA. Overall, respondents in this study showed realistic but hopeful attitudes to what the SOA was about and what could be achieved through it over time. The information gathered through this study should be merited as baseline data which captured the SOA participants' early experience and expectations.     

Why Is There Less Public Trust in Local Government Than in Central Government in China?

The public’s trust in government, whether at national, regional, or local levels, is always a subject that arouses interest and debate among researchers as well as politicians. This article presents findings from an analysis of survey research conducted in 2011 and provides insights both on a hierarchical trust pattern of public trust in central and local governments in China, and on the key factors accounting for variance in this respect by multiple regression analysis.     

Subsidiary,supporter or challenger? Local‐national relations in Japan

The impact of governance attributes on frequently overlooked attitudes of local councillors towards local governance reform agendas is assessed, based on the MAELG survey of approximately 11,000 councillors in 15 European countries and Israel. Eighteen policy statements are grouped into six reform agendas, followed by analyses of their explanatory factors. Europe's north–south divide is found meaningful for the understanding of variations in attitudes towards reform, being most profound in notions of democracy, participation and devolution. Southern Europe, including post-communist Europe, shows clear support for new democratic mechanisms, whereas northern European councillors reveal more reserved, perhaps weary, attitudes towards reforms. Councillors may provide the ‘correct’ statements in the south, because less has been reformed there so far, knowing that change would anyway be difficult. Substantial variations between different northern sub-groups could be linked to the memory of non-democratic regimes in Germany and Austria and to the influence of existing systems, deeply embedded in local political cultures. Nevertheless, the impact of present institutional practices is far from universal. Councillors in liberal regimes are not pro-privatisation, and cautious attitudes towards reform are shared by northern decentralised and centralised countries.     

The Rise of the Resilient Local Authority?

The term resilience is increasingly being utilised within the study of public policy to depict how individuals, communities and organisations can adapt, cope, and ‘bounce back’ when faced with external shocks such as climate change, economic recession and cuts in public expenditure. In focussing on the local dimensions of the resilience debate, this article argues that the term can provide useful insights into how the challenges facing local authorities in the UK can be reformulated and reinterpreted. The article also distinguishes between resilience as ‘recovery’ and resilience as ‘transformation’, with the latter's focus on ‘bouncing forward’ from external shocks seen as offering a more radical framework within which the opportunities for local innovation and creativity can be assessed and explained. While also acknowledging some of the weaknesses of the resilience debate, the dangers of conceptual ‘stretching’, and the extent of local vulnerabilities, the article highlights a range of examples where local authorities – and crucially, local communities – have enhanced their adaptive capacity, within existing powers and responsibilities. From this viewpoint, some of the barriers to the development of resilient local government are not insurmountable, and can be overcome by ‘digging deep’ to draw upon existing resources and capabilities, promoting a strategic approach to risk, exhibiting greater ambition and imagination, and creating space for local communities to develop their own resilience.