Citation

Tao P, Chen C. Disasters 2018; 42(2): 275-293.

Affiliation

Associate Professor, Leading Group for Financial and Economic Affairs, China.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/disa.12243

PMID

28792068

Abstract

China's disaster management system contains no law-based presidential disaster declarations; however, the national leader's instructions (pishi in Chinese) play a similar role to disaster declarations, which increase the intensity of disaster relief. This raises the question of what affects presidential disaster instructions within an authoritarian regime. This research shows that China's disaster politics depend on a crisis threshold system for operation and that the public and social features of disasters are at the core of this system. China's political cycle has no significant impact on disaster politics. A change in the emergency management system has a significant bearing on presidential disaster instructions, reflecting the strong influence of the concept of rule of law and benefiting the sustainable development of the emergency management system. In terms of disaster politics research, unlocking the black box of China's disaster politics and increasing the number of comparative political studies will benefit the development of empirical and theoretical study.

© 2017 The Author(s). Disasters © Overseas Development Institute, 2017.

Language: en

Keywords

content analysis; disaster politics; political logic; presidential instructions