Disasters and Politics: The Collective Behaviors and Emergency Governance in the Chi-Chi (Taiwan) Earthquake
Author: Ching-Ping Tang, Yun-tung Tsai, Chi Huang
Abstract / Chinese PDF Download
Following the 1999 Chi-Chi Earthquake of Taiwan there emerged two strands of collective behaviors: situation definition by victims and convergence of philanthropic assistance by non-victims. By adopting a social constructionist approach and the continuality principle, this paper examines the role of politics in governing the emergency. While a natural disaster can be understood as an extreme scenario with simultaneous demand and supply (labor and material resources) overloads in a given socio-political systems, that system needs not only an efficient administrative system to address the problems associating with the sudden external shock, but also a wise distribution of the huge resources. The latter, however, involves power and private incentives and is political by nature.