Disaster Intervention And The Role Of The State

This dissertation is an endeavor to study the role of the state in the housereconstruction from the perspective of the "state-centered theory" which regards thestate as an active actor. The author wants to relocate the discussion of the role of statefrom "economic development,""welfare supply," and "social movements" to"disaster intervention" and "risk response." In the first part of this dissertation, basedon the literatures review and case studies, the author not only distinguishes"administrative intervention" and "economic intervention," but also abstracts thehypotheses about the impacts of state disaster intervention, namely,"resourceredistribution effect" and "social change effect." The following part, includingchapters four through nine, uses the social survey data to analyze and assess the abovehypotheses from the perspectives of the way of reconstruction, the fund mobilization,the speed of rebuilding, the change of house, the subjective evaluation, and the socialeffect of house reconstruction respectively.In the introduction, the author brings forward the key academic problem that hewill work out. Meanwhile, in this chapter, the author introduces the process ofresearch, the method of collecting data, and the models used in this dissertation.The next chapter deals with related literatures. Based on the literature review, theauthor argues that, in modern times, due to its dual role, the state is the footstone oforganized intervention on disasters. Researchers should take more attention on therelationship between the state's roles and disaster intervention from the endogeneticperspective of disaster research.In Chapter Three, the author first introduces four cases, and then analyzes theinstitution background of government intervention and the logics of differentparticipators. In addition, two kinds of government intervention measures("administrative intervention" and "economic intervention") are distinguished andtwo hypotheses ("resource redistribution effect" and "social change effect") areabstracted based on the analysis in this chapter.The following two chapters focus on the extant and mechanisms of the two kindsof measures mentioned in the last chapter. Chapter Four explores the effects ofadministrative interventions on the ways of reconstruction. And the analysisdemonstrates that fourteen percent of rebuilt houses are intervened strongly, twenty- six percent are intervened weakly, and sixty percent have not been intervened.Chapter Five concerns how the economic intervention measures, which includesubsidy and low interest loan, affect money mobilization. The results show that theeconomic interventions have comprehensive effects on the house rebuilding. A part ofresources are distributed through their interventions according to "the rule of relativeneeds." Meanwhile, the analysis finds that social networks predominated by "the ruleof relative advantages" have a great contribution to raising funds for housereconstruction.Chapters six through eight evaluate the impacts of administrative interventionfrom three dimensions: the speed of house rebuilding, the objective changes of houses,and people's subjective evaluation to their new house. With regard to the speed ofhouse rebuilding, administrative interventions on the basic steps prolong the term ofreconstruction. Meanwhile, the results show that there is a high house change rate,which is underpinned mainly by the administrative interventions. Finally, thisdissertation finds that the administrative intervention causes various impacts on thedifferent dimension of people's subjective evaluation. The administrative interventionhas positive impacts on the convention of house, but it induces more dissatisfactionwith the quality of houses.In Chapter Nine, the author concerns the general impacts caused by the housereconstruction. The study finds that, although house rebuilding has serious negativeimpacts on those household with worse pre-earthquake economic situation and highercredit rate, it does not have significant effects on the expectation for future life. Andthe cooperation, including labor exchange, has positive consequences on the socialcapital of communities.There is an open discussion in the last part on the endogenous risk embedded inthe state's role played in the disaster intervention from the perspectives ofinconsonance between governance ambition and governance capability and theequality of policy. Finally, this dissertation reaffirms that a more effective democracyis the basic principle and the best strategy to deal with disaster risk.