The Political,Economic, and Social Aspects of Katrina

In this paper, we examine the resiliency of community recovery after a natural disaster. We argue that a resilient recovery requires robust economic/financial institutions, political/legal institutions, and social/cultural institutions. We explore how politically and privately created disaster preconditions and responses have contributed to or undermined institutional robustness in the context of the Gulf Coast's recovery after Hurricane Katrina. We find that where postdisaster resiliency has been observed, private-sector responses contributing to the health of these institutional arenas are largely responsible. Where postdisaster fragility and slowness has been observed, public-sector responses contributing to the frailty of these institutional arenas are largely the cause. In other words, we engage in a comparative institutional analysis of civil society, entrepreneurial commercial society, and government agencies and political actors in the wake of a natural disaster.