Crises and Crisis Management: Toward Comprehensive Government Decision Making

Industrial Society is susceptibile to catastrophic events, including technological disasters and social and political crises. Risk, uncertainty, crisis, collective stress, and "normal accidents" now need to be incorporated into a broader understanding of how governments and decision makers respond to the un-ness of crisis situations: unpleasantness in unexpected circumstances, representing unscheduled events, unprecedented in their implications and, by normal routine standards, almost unmanageable. Current horizons in disaster and related studies need to be broadened to incorporate a political-administrative perspective on crises and crisis management. Prevailing insights within disaster studies are reviewed, and a broader crisis typology is presented. In addition, a five-step heuristic is outlined that helps to identify perceived administrative challenges posed by specific crisis events. Finally, some general patterns of governmental crisis intervention are outlined in a second typology in order to stimulate more generic future research into crisis episodes.