Disasters should be dull: but as long as distant authorities are in charge, that's impossible.

• Author: Haeffele-Balch, Stefanie
• Position: BOOKS - Daniel J. Clarke and Stefan Dercon's "Dull Disasters?" - Book review

AS YOU MIGHT expect of a volume with the word dull in the title, Dull Disasters? is not a sexy book. The authors, Daniel J. Clarke and Stefan Dercon, are an actuary and an economics professor, respectively. Their thesis is that with better planning and coordination, natural and humanitarian disasters can become less exciting TV viewing and more, well, dull. In a good way.

"Be prepared" is sound and uncontroversial advice, but which people do the preparation matters. The correct dispute, F.A. Hayek wrote, is not "whether planning is to be done or not. It is a dispute as to whether planning is to be done centrally...or is to be divided among many individuals."

Therein lies the tension in Clarke and Dercon's book, and in disaster policy more broadly. They assume that centralizing the planning process is both efficient and possible. Yet many of their examples show people's ingenuity in devising systems tailored to their own needs. Rather than centralizing these examples into one-size-fits-all programs, we should appreciate the flexibility and uniqueness of local solutions.

THE HEART OF Clarke and Demon's argument is a critique of the "begging bowl"--their term for the system by which government agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOS) beg for taxpayer and private dollars after a disaster. This "medieval" approach, they argue, is "too slow" and "leads to a fragmented response."

They have a point. Waiting until a disaster strikes to gather funding and craft an overarching plan means that valuable time is spent pandering for cash rather than rebuilding. As they write, "The way forward is to act before disasters strike, preparing credible plans with rules-based decision-making and early action and held together with sound financial planning agreed beforehand." After a disaster, the relevant policy question should be how rules will be enforced, not what kind of new rules will be put in place.

Agencies and NGOS already plan, of course. But once disasters strike, they tend to cast these plans aside, introducing uncertainty and causing delays. As Clarke and Dercon write, politicians "prefer discretion over rules."

The results are uninspiring. After Hurricane Katrina, for example, Congress appropriated over $100 billion for disaster recovery. If it had bundled the cash into helicopters and dropped it over major population centers, the results might well have been superior to what we saw. Consider Louisiana's dysfunctional Road Home Program...