Managing Transboundary Crises : Requirements for a Dynamic Response
This paper develops a framework for analyzing the political-administrative capacity of public authorities to respond to transboundary crises (such as pandemics, cyberattacks and prolonged critical infrastructure failure). To complement our traditional notion of capacity as a fixed set of skills, resources, and infrastructures (e.g., “assets”), it is important to think more about institutional and processual response features that allow rapid sharing, staging, and recombination of resources during an emerging crisis. The crisis governance literature is filled with examples of both successes and failures in the mobilization and sharing of assets during crisis events. However, there has been little attention to the general factors that allow responders to effectively mobilize and deploy the collective assets of a society under threat. We analyze the 2001 anthrax outbreak in the US, the 2002-3 SARS outbreak in China and Canada, and the response to Hurricane Gustav (2008) to explore where and how response systems demonstrated dynamic capacity and crisis leadership. We conclude by suggesting principles/guidelines for fostering capacity to deal with transboundary crises