Richard S. Olson

The Politics of Humanitarian Aid: U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance, 1964–1995

Previous studies of U.S. foreign aid have firmly established that foreign policy and domestic considerations strongly influence allocations of military and economic development assistance. Uncharted, however, is the question of similar influences on U.S. humanitarian aid. Analyzing U.S. foreign disaster assistance data from 1964 through 1995, this paper concludes that foreign policy and domestic factors not only influence disaster assistance allocations but that they are the overriding determinant. This impact is, however, somewhat differential: the initial “yes/no” decision to grant disaster assistance is markedly political, but the subsequent “how much” decision is also not devoid of political considerations.

Disasters and Political Unrest: An Empirical Investigation

A connection between disasters and political unrest has often been suggested, but only case studies/anecdotes have been offered as evidence. To test statistically for a disaster-political unrest relationship, a causal model is developed that posits a direct and positive linkage between disaster severity and ensuing levels of political unrest. The model further specifies that increased levels of development, income equality, and regime repressiveness dampen post-disaster political unrest. Using a time-series between 1966 and 1980, Poisson regression results strongly corroborate the model. The exception is income equality, which has the opposite of the originally hypothesized effect.

Establishing public accountability, speaking truth to power and inducing political will for disaster risk reduction: ‘Ocho Rios + 25’

The problem is that disaster risk reduction (DRR) is still more a zone of political darkness than of light. Therefore, the purpose of our contribution to this theme issue is to illuminate at least some of that zone of political darkness and to suggest a more proactive, but for many career professionals a personally problematic, way forward for DRR. The career problematic derives from the fact that the way forward would involve moving from applauding the emergence of elected and/or appointed champions (from mayors to cabinet ministers to presidents/prime ministers) for action to raising the political costs of inaction by leaders not otherwise disposed. The essential element of this way forward would be greatly enhanced public accountability. We will draw preliminary accountability lessons from the Haiti earthquake catastrophe and the Chile earthquake disaster 2010 events towards the conclusion of this paper as we outline a possible future paradigm.

‘Normal’ versus ‘special’ time corruption: An exploration of mexican attitudes

This essay examines the relationship between corruption and political stability, with particular emphasis on Mexico. Through careful analysis of public opinion surveys from 1997–1998, exploring the differential attitudes towards ‘normal time corruption’ and ‘special time corruption’ (e.g. in connection with disaster relief), the data highlights how attitudes to corruption are context‐dependent. Natural disasters constitute ‘special times’ with a low level of acceptance of corruption, which sheds light on why societies that show at least grudging acceptance of ‘everyday corruption’ respond with unexpected negativity to ‘post‐disaster corruption’. Furthermore, the analysis illustrates how the poorer segments of the population, who have fewer interactions with government representatives, perceive a lower level of corruption. These findings thus begin to explain the political stability in Mexico, where the majority are poor, and therefore do not consider the system particularly corrupt and, as a consequence, illegitimate.