From Disaster Event to Political Crisis: A “5C+A” Framework for Analysis

Abstract

Why is it that some authorities, governments/administrations, and even entire regimes emerge from disasters more popular and politically stronger, while most appear to emerge less popular and politically weaker, sometimes fatally so? This paper argues that the often problematic political consequences of disasters can be understood more fully by seeing them as “Maslowian Shocks” with strong revelatory components where public estimation of government disaster response may be analyzed along six “5C+A” dimensions: capability, competence, compassion, correctness, credibility, and anticipation. The paper then illustrates the 5C+A framework with a set of cross-national examples and public opinion data from a 2001 post-earthquake survey in El Salvador.

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