Authors: Daniel P Aldrich Yoshikuni Ono
Publish Date: 2016/08/06
Volume: 84, Issue: 3, Pages: 1637-1659
Abstract
After a massive catastrophe local decision makers have a large number of potential sources of advice and assistance Yet we know little about those to whom politicians reach out at the local regional and national levels and what drives the intensity of contact with these targets Using original survey data drawn from more than 240 council members from cities towns and villages in the Tohoku region of Japan we investigate the factors influencing consultation after the March 11 2011 compounded disasters We find strong variation in their outreach to actors including nationallevel politicians governors prefectural politicians civil servants and local constituents Controlling for a number of compounding factors such as town size financial capability and personal characteristics of the politician we find that the degree of damage in their own communities robustly influences outreach after crisis The more damage the more local politicians reach out to a broader network of potentially useful connections more often Partisan and independent town council members behave differently those with party connections especially those with connections to a governing party reach out more than those without Our findings about diversity and intensity of outreach bring important implications for residents politicians and nongovernmental organizations after disaster
Keywords: