Publius: The Journal of Federalism - current issue

Shifting the Blame: Federalism, Media, and Public Assignment of Blame Following Hurricane Katrina

Maestas, C. D., Atkeson, L. R., Croom, T., Bryant, L. A. — 2008-08-30

Federalism sprang to the forefront in public debates about the response to Hurricane Katrina as officials from the national, state, and local government sought to shift blame to other levels of government. Our analysis shows that attempts by national political actors to frame the response as the fault of state government actions were successful, but the size of the effect was conditional on predispositions. Those who were more attentive to coverage were more likely to believe that state failure to call for help had a great effect on the length of time it took for national government to provide aid to New Orleans. The effect was strongest for Republicans, however, suggesting that predispositions mediate acceptance of elite frames that transfer blame.

Political Sophistication and Attributions of Blame in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina

Gomez, B. T., Wilson, J. M. — 2008-08-30

The governmental response to Hurricane Katrina was widely perceived to be flawed and inadequate. However, given the number of actors involved in coordinating relief efforts, both in the private sector and at all levels of government, attributions of responsibility vary widely. Drawing on the Theory of Heterogeneous Attribution, we explore the relationship between political sophistication and assessments of blame for the delayed governmental response. Using data from a survey of Louisiana residents, we find that citizens at higher levels of sophistication are less likely to find the federal government chiefly to blame, and more likely to fault actors at the state level. Moreover, less sophisticated respondents tend to focus blame disproportionately on the president, a tendency to which the more sophisticated are not as prone.

Partisan Polarization and Blame Attribution in a Federal System: The Case of Hurricane Katrina

Malhotra, N. — 2008-08-30

When multiple government authorities at overlapping levels of administration fail to do their jobs properly, whom do citizens hold responsible? People can potentially make more accurate judgments by taking into account the roles and responsibilities of the officials involved. However, if party identification plays a major role in shaping Americans’ attitudes on federalism, such information may potentially lead to even greater partisan polarization. This article explores these questions using a controlled experiment in which citizens were provided job titles of government officials involved in the poor response to Hurricane Katrina. Both Republican and Democratic citizens update their blame attributions in the same direction in response to new information. Despite polarized general attitudes on federalism, partisans do not polarize further when using specific information.

Race, Hurricane Katrina, and Government Satisfaction: Examining the Role of Race in Assessing Blame

Forgette, R., King, M., Dettrey, B. — 2008-08-30

Are there clear racial differences in government satisfaction across levels of government? And, if so, how do we explain this racial gap? Race was one of the prevailing cleavages in public attitudes toward Hurricane Katrina recovery and response. We propose and test contending explanations for racial differences in local, state, and national government satisfaction among Hurricane Katrina survivors. The first is an environmental vulnerability (racism) theory suggesting that minority populations are more vulnerable in their housing quality, location, and level of insurance compared to others. A second explanation relates to the role of informal or social networks in disaster recovery. We assess whether racial differences in perceptions of disaster response may be partly due to weaker informal social networks among minorities. A third explanation is that these differing explanations are largely a function of partisanship. Our findings indicate that the role of race in government evaluation was largely mediated through the greater environmental vulnerability and Democratic party identification of minorities.

Is Federalism the Reason for Policy Failure in Hurricane Katrina?

Birkland, T., Waterman, S. — 2008-08-30

Governmental responses to Hurricane Katrina are generally cited as policy failures. Media and popular analyses focus on the federal government's policy failures in hazard preparedness, response, and recovery. Meanwhile, disaster experts realize that disaster response is a shared intergovernmental responsibility. We examine the federal nature of natural disaster policy in the US to consider whether federalism, or other factors, had the greatest influence on the failures in Katrina. We find that some policy failures are related to policy design considerations based in federalism, but that the national focus on "homeland security" and the concomitant reduction in attention to natural hazards and disasters, are equally, if not more complicit, in the erosion of government disaster management capacity that was revealed in Hurricane Katrina.

Who's to Blame? (Mis) perceptions of the Intergovernmental Response to Disasters

Schneider, S. — 2008-08-30

This analysis shows that the intergovernmental response to Hurricane Katrina collapsed because those involved in the process did not have a clear understanding of their own roles and responsibilities or how the entire governmental response system should operate. New data are presented which demonstrate that citizens’ attitudes about intergovernmental responsibilities coincide quite closely with how the disaster response system is designed to function, but they differ from the way public officials involved in the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts thought the process should work. This mismatch between what various levels of government are expected to do and what activities they actually perform in emergency situations has contributed to extremely negative impressions within the American public about governmental performance during natural disasters.

The Architecture of Government: Rethinking Political Decentralization, edited by Daniel Treisman.

Agranoff, R. — 2008-08-30