The Influence of Politics on Federal Disaster Declaration Decision Delays

Langabeer James R., DelliFraine Jami and Alqusairi Diaa
Additional contact information
Langabeer James R.: University of Texas, Houston
DelliFraine Jami: University of Texas, Houston
Alqusairi Diaa: University of Texas, Houston

Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, 2012, vol. 9, issue 1, 19

Abstract: During major disasters, requests for federal assistance are of vital significance since speed of response can preserve lives and minimize total damage. Disaster declarations have extensive political consequences, and yet no previous study has explored the impact of partisan politics on the speed or timing of the decision. In this study, we use public choice decision theory to examine decision delays, since delays are often used for bureaucratic positioning and coping with uncertainty in the political process. We propose that the interaction effect of the political party affiliations of the president-governor dyad could partially explain the approval time delay differentials. We analyze 917 disaster declarations that occurred between 1993 and 2009. Using hierarchical moderated regression, we found evidence that the partisan nature of the dyad does influence overall decision delays and more specifically that a Democratic president-Republican governor combination resulted in the shortest mean delays across all declarations.

Keywords: disaster relief; public choice; decision theory; political decision making (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/1547-7355.1960 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:johsem:v:9:y:2012:i:1:p:19:n:19

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/jhsem/html

DOI: 10.1515/1547-7355.1960

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management is currently edited by Irmak Renda-Tanali

More articles in Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().