Government Bureaucracy and Two Newer Cultural Approaches to Provider Service Delivery to the Citizenry during Disasters

The Hurricane Katrina response by federal, state, and local governments in August-September 2005 caused some people to lose faith in the bureaucratic approach used by traditional government hierarchies to organize the provision of services to users who desperately needed them.

For example, at the local level, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin told the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security that he could not commandeer the dozens of available school buses to evacuate people from the Superdome because 1) the School Board owned those buses, 2) he exercised no authority over the School Board, and 3) an agreement between the city government and the school board to use those buses during crisis had not been accomplished because the School Board “had lots of administrative challenges, and it was next to impossible for us to effect any type of agreement with that agency,” testified Nagin. (1) Bureaucracy!

At the state level, Louisiana State Governor Kathleen Blanco, in the famous Friday (September 2, 2005) foray with President George W. Bush aboard Air Force One, delayed use of military forces to begin reconstitution of the stricken localities until she could validate her (bureaucratic) authority to rule the troops by disallowing federalizing National Guard in her state. Nagin, who attended part of the Air Force One meeting, described it this way: “To be real frank with you, that meeting, you know, left me somewhat disappointed because there was no real decision [about deploying forces to New Orleans to help him] that was made at that meeting. And I think there was a 24-hour period when the president and the governor were going to get back together…It was just a question of who had final authority [over the armed forces]…I was hoping that, you know, we had everyone in the room that was decision makers [that the decision could be made].” Nagin told the president and governor: “Mr. President, Madame Governor, if the two of you don’t get together on this issue, the more people who are going to die in this city. You need to resolve this immediately. And they said yes. And I said, ‘Everybody else in this room, let’s leave and let them work this out right now.’” (1,2) Bureaucracy!

At the federal level, the US President, the Homeland Security secretary, and Federal Emergency Management Agency director could provide services to users in New Orleans during Katrina only at the discretion of the governor of Louisiana (short of the federal authorities invoking the “Insurrection Act”). (2,3) Bureaucracy!

What is the Bureaucratic Approach?

The invention of Western bureaucracy several centuries ago was an important advance in civilization that helped solve the problem for leaders of governing human systems that grew larger and more complicated with each passing year. (5) The great virtue and probably defining characteristic of bureaucracy is as “an institutional method for applying general rules to specific cases, thereby making the actions of government fair and predictable,” according to German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920). (4)

The downside of the bureaucratic approach of providing services to public users is its inefficiency and the development of an unhealthy bureaucratic elitism as some bureaucrats begin to believe that they are the sole and dominant force invented to solve societal issues. Americans in general deeply believe in the values of equality and liberty and, as a result, tolerate bureaucratic inefficiency so long as rules are applied equally, fairly, and predictably to ALL Americans and that ALL Americans have equal opportunity to the services provided by government entities. The entitlement attitude of some bureaucrats, which is even enabled by some Americans, may result in the emasculation of the public, as reflected in the following statements one might hear in a bureaucratic culture:

1. “WE [the bureaucracy] are entitled to decide what THEY must do”; and

2. “THEY [the bureaucracy] are entitled to decide what WE must do. (10)

The application of the bureaucratic approach as the SOLE or even DOMINANT method of delivering services during disasters has not, does not, and never will work well. (4-6) This is so because response services in a disaster situation are exquisitely time sensitive, meaning there is only a short window of time when they will be useful to users. Alas, bureaucracies are deliberately non-time-sensitive! There are just too many bottlenecks that a bureaucratic flow must pass through to get from A to B, all the while striving to protect and uphold society’s cherished values (for which the bureaucracy was invented). A stricken population in need of a critical time-sensitive service, such as evacuation by buses, provision of water, or provision of prophylactic medicines during an epidemic, is, however, NOT benefited by a government bureaucracy that by its very nature may postpone provision of the needed services until ALL users are guaranteed to have equal access to that service.

Bureaucracies’ inability to turn on a dime in a disaster situation is offset by their astonishing ability to concentrate and EVENTUALLY distribute resources equally and fairly to all Americans who need them. The point here is that we DO need bureaucracies in disaster situations.

Is the Bureaucratic Approach the Only Approach to Providing Services in Disaster Situations?

The answer to this question is “No”, although listening to the discourse in the US Congress following the Katrina disaster, one would think that the bureaucratic approach is the only possible approach to saving stricken populations (more elitism). Two other notable approaches to providing services in disaster situations are the 1. marketplace (individualism) approach and 2. mutuality (egalitarian) approach, discussed separately below. Keep in mind that marketplace and mutuality approaches, if used ALONE, would fail by degrees to meet the need for which they were applied in the face of a disaster, just like the bureaucratic approach used alone. The point here is that all three approaches--bureaucracy, marketplace, and mutualism—may be SYNERGISTIC and, in the long view, NECESSARY to meet the increasingly complex service needs of Americans facing severe social stress during disasters. (7)

What is the “Marketplace Approach” to Providing Users with Services in Disaster Situations?

The marketplace approach to delivery of services in disaster situations champions the idea that effective social systems emerge spontaneously from competition and entrepreneurial action (the “hidden hand of the market”), and that service delivery is demand led. Users, rather than being restricted to waiting for services to come down through government bureaucratic channels, have the freedom to choose where to get those services. In this approach, flows of services are relatively unconstrained and flow to individuals. In a marketplace approach to remedying a disaster situation, the individual user says: “I decide what I want to do.” (6)

The current Tamiflu situation is a good example of the marketplace approach to providing users with services in disasters situations, as described elsewhere. (7) Briefly, Tamiflu is an antiviral medicine useful in preventing and treating sporadic, epidemic, and pandemic influenza. Currently Tamiflu is stockpiled by the federal government to be released to states upon request, then to local government agencies, and finally to users in the event of a serious outbreak of flu (note the bureaucratic channels).

Tamiflu must be taken early (less than 48 hours) in the course of illness to prevent symptoms and disease. Some people lobbied very hard to have Tamiflu placed in the Strategic National Stockpile and do not abide private citizens or businesses obtaining Tamiflu for future use, effectively bypassing the bureaucratic system that “ensures” that everyone in the country, poor and disadvantaged especially, have equal access to this lifesaving medication. Since poor people and other do not have the OPPORTUNITY also to purchase Tamiflu on the free market, so the reasoning goes, no one should have that freedom to choose. Taking this argument to its (illogical) endpoint, bureaucrats and lobbyists for bureaucrats reason that it is better that ALL people may get Tamiflu a little late (when it is by degrees less and less efficacious) than a situation in which SOME people get it early and others not until later.

It does not have to be an either/or situation, meaning that the bureaucratic approach AND the marketplace approach may work synergistically to supply the public with what it needs to survive a disaster. Enlightened Scottish researchers Simmons, et al, write eloquently about this possibility. (6) Hong Kong public health authorities also are working on the thesis that they will need BOTH bureaucratic and marketplace approaches to distributing Tamiflu to the population in time for it to be useful. They are not as concerned with ensuring equality of opportunity to services, as is the case in America. Rather they have focused on business continuity, knowing that if enough workers become ill, the economy will stop and everyone will suffer.

The “Mutualistic” Approach to Providing Users with Services in Disaster Situations

The mutualistic approach to service provision during disaster situations emphasizes solidarity, mutual aid, and participation. It champions the idea that cooperation adds value to social systems, and dispenses with or counteracts the coercion wrought by bureaucracies and the self interest evoked by marketplace approaches to service delivery. 

The mutualistic approach involves the co-production of services by citizens in conjunction with government entities, as described elsewhere. (8-9) Briefly, citizen coproduction of services means that citizens and their associations contribute important inputs to a government service and therefore are coproducers of that government service. The citizen coproduction paradigm is very different from the more common bureaucratic hierarchical paradigm that views the government as a producer of services to citizens who, as passive clients, consume those services, all the while judging, but not contributing in any way to improving, the quality of the services. (9) The mutualistic approach to producing needed services in disaster situations also differs from the  marketplace paradigm because a mutualistic approach, by definition, depends on organized GROUPS of citizens interacting with government entities, rather than INDIVIDUAL citizens seeking to (privately) maximize their ability to survive a disaster.

The mutualistic approach to service provision in disaster situations is coordinated by peer review and peer pressure, NOT by the “hidden hand of the market” (marketplace approach) and NOT by the tight regulation and oversight of government agencies (bureaucratic approach). The mutualistic approach is unconstrained and flows freely to reach as many group members as possible. It is morals-based and principled, built on a vision of the good in people who, by associating into user groups, enhance service delivery by helping to produce it. Participants in a mutualistic approach to service production during disasters say: “WE decide what WE want to do.”

The “Rescue Riders” citizen biker association in Kane County, Illinois, exemplifies the mutualistic approach to providing the public with services in disaster situations. It came into being through the vision of the Kane County Department of Health agency’s Medical Reserve Corps coordinator Patrick DeMoon who contacted Dean Akey, a leader of a charity group for bikers to ask for his group’s assistance in improving public health emergency response capabilities in the event of a public health emergency in the county.

The partnership has blossomed as the citizen-bikers, in collaboration with the Department of Health, have learned cardiopulmonary resuscitation techniques, first aid, and incident management system tools from credentialed instructors. The bikers practice navigating the roads of the county in so-called “Poker Runs”, which challenge them to reach site B from site A WITHOUT using conventional roads in the most efficient and safe manner.

Final Thoughts

There are at least three approaches to providing services to the public in a disaster situation: hierarchical/bureaucratic, marketplace, and mutualistic. There is no reason why these three approaches cannot co-flow! Indeed, to manage effectively and efficiently the growing number of increasingly complex disasters we may expect in the future, ALL THREE approaches operating together may become essential to produce acceptable outcomes. Conceptualization of these three approaches by researcher Simmons, et al, provides fresh air into the stale and increasingly obsolete debate about the virtues and fallibilities of “government (public) vs. private sector” approaches to planning for and managing disasters.  

Sources:

1. SEMP Biot #326: “Testimony of Mayor Ray Nagin before the Senate Committee on
Homeland Security, February 1, 2006” (February 1, 2006) at: http://www.semp.us/biots/biot_326.html; accessed November 7, 2006. 

2. SEMP Biot #266: “Task Force Pelican: The Rebel Yells” (September 19, 2005) at: http://www.semp.us/biots/biot_266.html; accessed November 7, 2006.

3. SEMP Biot #165: “How the 1868 Posse Comitatus Act Influences U.S. Department of Defense Missions” (January 15, 2005) at: http://www.semp.us/biots/biot_165.html; accessed November 7, 2006.

4. SEMP Biot #145: “What Is Bureaucracy?” (December 3, 2004) at: http://www.semp.us/biots/biot_145.html; accessed November 7, 2006.

5. James Q. Wilson. “Bureaucracy.” Basic Books, 1989, pp. 334-335.

6. Richard Simmons, Johnston Birchall, Alan Prost: “Cultural tensions in public service delivery: Implications for producer-consumer relationships”: Working paper Series, February 2006. Available online at: http://www.consume.bbk.ac.uk/working_papers/Birchallworking%20paper.doc; accessed November 7, 2006.

7. SEMP Biot #410: “Tamiflu Alert! 36 Million Americans Owned Tamiflu in October 2006” (November 1, 2006) at: http://www.semp.us/biots/biot_410.php; accessed November 7, 2006.

8.  SEMP Biot #117: “What Does Roz Lasker Know About Public Reaction to a Smallpox or Dirty Bomb Terrorist Attack?” available at: http://www.semp.us/biots/biot_117.html, accessed November 7, 2006.

9. SEMP Biot #178: “The Seven Signs of Terrorism and Citizen Coproduction of Terrorism Prevention” at http://www.semp.us/biots/biot_178.html; accessed November 7, 2006.

10. For more information on the “Rescue Riders”, please see: http://rescueriders.org/modules/news/; accessed November 8, 2006.