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Governmental organisations often fail to prepare themselves adequately for complex problems such as natural disasters. This is remarkable because these threats are usually studied intensively and governments do develop plans for such situations. Christer Brown demonstrates in his thesis that the complexity of governmental systems and the mutual interdependence of various government organisations hinder the preparations for something like a natural disaster. This particularly applies to government organisations which have to operate in a many-layered administrative system. Brown investigated the case of the American Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which appeared to be insufficiently prepared to respond adequately during the disaster caused by hurricane Katrina in Louisiana in 2005. This was apparently due to a shift in political attention from natural disasters to terrorism within the FEMA, and this forced the agency to establish different priorities for its policies.

"Hurricane Katrina: Analyzing a Mega-Disaster" published on by Oxford University Press.

This paper examines the operation of the presidential advisory system during the 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina crises in order to explain the marked differences in presidential crisis leadership performance during the acute phase of both crises. It first presents a conceptual framework for the systematic study of 'crisis advisory configurations' around presidents, based on an integrated review of the advisory systems and crisis management literatures. Second, the framework is applied to George W. Bush's performance in three crucial crisis leadership task domains-sense making, decision making, and meaning making. The article concludes by identifying key challenges of building crisis management capacity around heads of government such as the U.S. president. Adapted from the source document.

This paper examines the operation of the presidential advisory system during the 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina crises in order to explain the marked differences in presidential crisis leadership performance during the acute phase of both crises. It first presents a conceptual framework for the systematic study of "crisis advisory configurations" around presidents, based on an integrated review of the advisory systems and crisis management literatures. Second, the framework is applied to George W. Bush's performance in three crucial crisis leadership task domains—sense making, decision making, and meaning making. The article concludes by identifying key challenges of building crisis management capacity around heads of government such as the U.S. president.

This article probes the warning‐response failures that left the city of New Orleans vulnerable to catastrophic hurricanes and the inability of local, state, and federal authorities to mount an adequate response to the consequences unleashed by Hurricane Katrina. Through an empirical exploration with the help of three broad explanatory 'cuts' derived from the relevant interdisciplinary literature – psychological, bureau‐organizational, and agenda‐political – the authors seek to shed light on the sources of failure that contributed to the various levels of governments' lack of preparedness and the inadequate collective response to a long‐predicted, upper‐category hurricane. The article concludes by addressing the question of whether the vulnerabilities and problems that contributed to the Katrina failure are amenable to reform.