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Centralized Disaster Management Collaboration in Turkey
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Government.
2017 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Following unprecedented earthquakes in 1999, highly centralized Turkey initiated reforms that aimed to improve disaster management collaboration and to empower local authorities. In 2011, two earthquakes hit the country anew affecting the city of Van and town of Erciş in Turkey’s southeast.

In attempts to reduce disaster risk, global disaster risk reduction frameworks and disaster scholars and practitioners advocate collaborative and decentralized disaster management strategies. This thesis investigates how such strategies are received in a centralized and hierarchical national political-administrative system that largely is the anti-thesis of the prescribed solutions. More specifically, this research investigates the barriers and prerequisites for disaster management collaboration between both public and civil society actors in Turkey (during preparedness, response, and recovery) as well as how Turkey’s political-administrative system affects disaster management collaboration and its outcomes. The challenges to decentralization of disaster management are also investigated.

Based on forty-four interviews with actors ranging from national to village level and NGOs, the findings suggest that the political-administrative system can alter the relative importance, validity, and applicability of previously established enabling or constraining conditions for collaboration. This may in turn challenge previous theoretical assumptions regarding collaboration.

By adopting a mode of collaboration that fit the wider political-administrative system, collaborative disaster management progress was achieved in Turkey’s national level activities. Although there were exceptions, collaboration spanning sectors and/or administrative levels were generally less forthcoming, partly due to the disjoint character of the political-administrative system. Political divergence between local and central actors made central-local collaboration difficult but these barriers were partly trumped by other prerequisites enabling collaboration like interdependence and pre-existing relations. The findings suggest that the specific attributes of disasters may both help and hinder disaster management collaboration. Such collaboration generally improved disaster response. The findings also indicate that the decentralization attempts may have been premature as the conditions for ensuring a functional decentralization of disaster management are presently lacking. Decentralization attempts are commonly suggested to increase local capacity and local participation but the findings of this dissertation suggest that in Turkey, these commodities may currently have better chances of being increased by refraining from decentralization.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2017. , p. 90
Series
Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Social Sciences, ISSN 1652-9030 ; 141
Keywords [en]
collaboration, disaster management, collaborative disaster management, cross-sector collaboration, trust, power balance, legitimacy, integration, local knowledge, local actors, civil society, interdependence, pre-existing relations, political affiliation, natural disaster, disaster response, damage assessment, aid distribution, search and rescue, decentralization, central-local collaboration, political-administrative system, Turkey, Van, Erciş
National Category
Public Administration Studies
Research subject
Political Science
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-319273ISBN: 978-91-554-9869-6 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-319273DiVA, id: diva2:1086710
Public defence
2017-06-08, Brusewitzsalen, Östra Ågatan 19, Uppsala, 13:00 (Swedish)
Opponent
Supervisors
Available from: 2017-05-11 Created: 2017-04-03 Last updated: 2017-05-16
List of papers
1. Disaster Management Collaboration in Turkey: Assessing Progress and Challenges of Hybrid Network Governance
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Disaster Management Collaboration in Turkey: Assessing Progress and Challenges of Hybrid Network Governance
2016 (English)In: Public Administration, ISSN 0033-3298, E-ISSN 1467-9299, Vol. 94, no 2, p. 333-349Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Managing disasters generally demands multiorganizational collaboration and collaborative skills. In Turkey, observed shortcomings in disaster management collaboration prompted a reorganization of the disaster management system that led to the emergence of a centralized hybrid network. The network governance literature generally heralds decentralized organization and shared network governance, which facilitate collaboration by maximizing trust and legitimacy and minimizing power imbalances. Through the use of 24 semi-structured interviews, this article's objective is to assess the applicability of prior theoretical assumptions regarding interorganizational collaboration in a political-administrative context different from that in which they were originally developed. The study contributes to the theoretical discussion about how political-administrative system attributes might influence interorganizational disaster management collaboration. The results suggest that ‘tailor-fitting’ interorganizational network designs to the political-administrative culture can be beneficial for collaborative disaster management. Furthermore, results suggest that more effort should be devoted to examining cases where actors manage to overcome barriers to collaboration despite challenging institutional and political-administrative landscapes.

National Category
Public Administration Studies
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-272179 (URN)10.1111/padm.12203 (DOI)000378648600004 ()
External cooperation:
Available from: 2016-01-12 Created: 2016-01-12 Last updated: 2017-11-30Bibliographically approved
2. Disaster Response in Turkey: Conditions Promoting Cross-Sectoral Collaboration and Implications for Effectiveness
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Disaster Response in Turkey: Conditions Promoting Cross-Sectoral Collaboration and Implications for Effectiveness
2019 (English)In: Administration & Society, ISSN 0095-3997, E-ISSN 1552-3039, Vol. 51, no 7, p. 1051-1078Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Local and civil society can play decisive roles in disaster response. Yet, the disaster management literature is unclear regarding the conditions that enable cross-sectoral collaboration. Using a collaborative governance framework and 44 semi-structured interviews, this study investigates how trust, pre-existing relations, interdependence, knowledge, and resources affect cross-sectoral collaboration during disaster response in Turkey. The results illustrate how these factors interact with system context factors, like political compatibility, to facilitate or hinder cross-sectoral collaboration. The study concludes that cross-sectoral collaboration is no panacea for successful disaster response but empirical examples suggest that cross-sectoral collaboration can contribute to reducing suboptimal disaster response. 

Keywords
cross-sectoral collaboration, collaborative governance, disaster response, local and civil society actors, political compatibility, Turkey
National Category
Public Administration Studies
Research subject
Political Science
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-310415 (URN)10.1177/0095399716680058 (DOI)000475451800003 ()
Available from: 2016-12-15 Created: 2016-12-15 Last updated: 2019-08-12Bibliographically approved
3. Challenges to Decentalization of Disaster Management in Turkey
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Challenges to Decentalization of Disaster Management in Turkey
(English)In: International Journal of Public Administration, ISSN 0190-0692, E-ISSN 1532-4265Article in journal (Refereed) Submitted
National Category
Public Administration Studies
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-318858 (URN)
Available from: 2017-03-29 Created: 2017-03-29 Last updated: 2017-11-29

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