The Story of Katrina: New Orleans and the Political Economy of Catastrophe

This paper analyzes the public policies that lead to "Katrina," paying particular attention to political decisions that created unusual risks in the New Orleans area. Most of the deaths from hurricane Katrina were concentrated in one place, New Orleans, and those losses arose in large part...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Public choice 2006-04, Vol.127 (1/2), p.5-30
Main Author: Congleton, Roger D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bayous
Cities
Competence
Corruption
Crises
Crisis management
Disaster relief
Disasters
Economic aspects
Economic development
Editorial Commentaries on the Political Economy of Catastrophe in New Orleans
Efficiency, Administrative
Emergency management
Emergency preparedness
Federal emergency management agency
Federalism
Flood damage
Floods
Hurricanes
Lakes
Levees
Louisiana
Management
Management of crises
Natural disasters
New Orleans, Louisiana
Partisanship
Policy studies
Political behavior
Political economy
Politics
Public administration
Public policy
Risk
Rivers
Sea level
Storm damage
Storms
Studies
Tidal waves
U.S.A
United States
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Summary:This paper analyzes the public policies that lead to "Katrina," paying particular attention to political decisions that created unusual risks in the New Orleans area. Most of the deaths from hurricane Katrina were concentrated in one place, New Orleans, and those losses arose in large part from its location in combination with its three century long effort to "manage" the risks associated with that location. Crisis management is inherently more error prone than ordinary policy making, because surprise implies the existence of significant information problems and urgency implies that time does not exist to completely address those problems (Congleton, 2005). In New Orleans the unavoidable mistakes of crisis management were compounded by policy choices made well before Katrina made landfall, as well as federalism, partisan politics, corruption, and incompetence.
ISSN:0048-5829
1573-7101
DOI:10.1007/s11127-006-7729-9