LEADERSHIP STYLE,CRISIS RESPONSE AND BLAME MANAGEMENT: THE CASE OF HURRICANE KATRINA

Crisis management research has largely ignored one of the most pressing challenges political leaders are confronted with in the wake of a large‐scale extreme event: how to cope with what is commonly called the blame game. In this article, we provide a heuristic to help understand political leader responses to blame in the aftermath of crises, emphasizing the crucial role of their leadership style on the political management of Inquiries. After integrating theoretical and empirical findings on crisis management and political leadership styles, we illustrate our heuristic by applying it to the Bush administration's response to Hurrican Katrina in 2005. We conclude by offering suggestions for further research on the underdeveloped subject of the blame management challenges faced by political leaders in the wake of acute crisis episodes.     

Ripples Not Waves: A Policy Configuration Approach to Reform in the Wake of the 1998 Sydney Water Crisis

The aim of this article is to understand why, in the aftermath of the 1998 Sydney water contamination crisis, policy and institutional reform was comparatively minor—despite intense scrutiny and criticism of the framework of water policy in New South Wales (NSW). The article should be of serious interest to scholars interested in crisis and policy change, rather than simply those with a particular interest in water policy in Australia. It frames the Sydney case as a disconfirming one but finds that an understanding of the stability/change relationship in NSW water policy can only partially be understood through applying key contemporary institutional, actor, and interest‐centered explanations. Therefore, it probes the plausibility of an additional explanation and develops the rudiments of a new “policy configuration” approach to help explain policy stability and change. It concludes by suggesting that there is potential for a policy configuration perspective to be tested against other cases.     

Equity in Toxic Tort Litigation: Unjust Enrichment and the Poor*

This paper proposes to explore the current and prospective role of equitable theories and remedies in toxic tort litigation. The argument is for an unjust enrichment remedy in certain property pollution cases. The idea is to remove the monetary incentive for polluting economically depressed areas. Two specific areas of investigation come immediately to mind. First, courts have already embraced equitable remedies to address pollution damages. Under Ayers and its progeny, many states have allowed the equitable remedy medical monitoring. What is important to understand is how legal relief for increased risk claims would have been inadequate and also the propriety of finding an equitable approach. Second, moving from personal injury to real property damage claims, we see a similar opportunity for use of equitable relief under an unjust enrichment theory. Currently, there is much debate about the propriety of restoration damages as opposed to fair market value (FMV) damages for the landowners whose property is damaged by the pollution of another. Each approach has various strengths and weaknesses. A better approach might be to use unjust enrichment on a law and economics basis as a remedy to force polluters to internalize the cost of pollution. For instance, take a polluter who pollutes the neighboring environs in lieu of paying one million dollars in disposal and storage costs. Assume the neighboring properties are only worth three hundred thousand dollars on a FMV approach. Assume further that restoration costs are ten million dollars, but that the relevant government agency would accept a natural attenuation clean‐up approach. How should the remedy be set, and should one consider allowing a de facto pollution easement?     

Teenage Drivers and Fatal Crash Responsibility

Data from national files on fatal crashes are analyzed to reveal that young drivers, especially sixteen and seventeen year olds, are more often responsible for fatal crashes than are older drivers. This is particularly the case for young males. Moreover, those killed in crashes for which teenagers are responsible are disproportionately people other than the teenaged drivers. A possible explanation for these facts lies in the "macho" culture of teenaged males. Potential countermeasures include those directed to limiting the driving exposure of teenagers as well as technological devices to moderate the injury-producing forces in crashes.     

The Effect of Curfew Laws on Motor Vehicle Crashes

Twelve states in the U.S. have curfew laws, which prohibit young drivers from operating motor vehicles during late evening or early morning hours. The effect of such laws on motor vehicle crashes was studied in four of these states. In each state the laws were found substantially to reduce the crashes of sixteen year olds. Sixteen year old driver crash involvements during curfew hours were reduced by an estimated 69 percent in Pennsylvania, 62 percent in New York, 40 percent in Maryland, and 25 percent in Louisiana. Except in Maryland, the percentage of the sixteen year old population licensed was lower in curfew than comparison states. It is possible that curfew laws reduce early licensure, in which case reductions in crash involvements resulting from curfews are greater than shown above.