Political Science

Why is it that some authorities, governments/administrations, and even entire regimes emerge from disasters more popular and politically stronger, while most appear to emerge less popular and politically weaker, sometimes fatally so? This paper argues that the often problematic political consequences of disasters can be understood more fully by seeing them as “Maslowian Shocks” with strong revelatory components where public estimation of government disaster response may be analyzed along six “5C+A” dimensions: capability, competence, compassion, correctness, credibility, and anticipation. The paper then illustrates the 5C+A framework with a set of cross-national examples and public opinion data from a 2001 post-earthquake survey in El Salvador.

This article focuses on the 1976 Guatemala earthquake disaster as a possible crisis trigger, in a relatively strict application of the critical juncture analytical approach. It expands to include the broader question of what conditions might cause disasters to trigger crises that open critical junctures for nation-states. The research concludes that the 1976 Guatemala disaster led to a high degree of community self-organizing and alliance-building across Guatemala, which the Guatemalan national security state at that time perceived as a fundamental crisis requiring a response. This reaction generated significant debate and policy conflict within the state; the resulting decision was massively repressive violence, with legacies that continue to this day. Another conclusion is that strictly applied, critical juncture analysis can untangle often very complicated disaster postimpact emergency, recovery, and reconstruction situations.

Fire season in Southern California is late summer through fall, when strong winds (the famous Santa Anas) out of the eastern deserts sweep across a desiccated and fuel-rich terrain of light forest and brush known as “chaparral. ” It doesn’t take much—a careless hiker, camper, or motorist, an accident, a lightning strike, an amateur arsonist—to ignite a fire. In fact, firefighters contain and extinguish hundreds of fires every year in California, many of which have the potential to become full-blown wildfires. The last week of October 2003 saw all the components for classic Southern California wildfires, and outbreaks occurred in the eastern portions of San Diego, San Bernardino, Riverside, and Los Angeles Counties. Several developed quickly into wildfires—and then firestorms. In the end, more than 13,000 firefighters were on the lines across the four counties. Nearly seven weeks later, when all the fires were officially extinguished, more than 750,000 acres had burned, 3,600 dwellin...

Foreign direct investment from transnational corporations across Southeast Asia provides an opportunity to examine the cross-cultural workplace. Most research on cross-cultural workplace takes place in developed countries, but little has been done on the cross-cultural workplace in developing countries. We examine the extent and determinants of organizational commitment among 959 Thai employees in 10 Japanese and American transplant corporations in the Bangkok area. These data were supplemented with in-depth interviews of Thai, Japanese and US managers in 24 transplant corporations and follow-up interviews. Consistent with the literature, we found higher levels of identification and behavioral commitment among employees of U. S firms. In addition, confiding in one’s supervisor was positively related to both identification and behavioral comment in Japanese firms. Finally, females were more behaviorally committed in Japanese firms while males had significantly more identification com...