Explaining the Unexplainable: Hurricane Katrina, FEMA, and the Bush Administration

My paper presents an institutional and political hypothesis about the non-intervention of the Federal Government when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in August 2005. Indeed, the non-intervention of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was a form of intervention. Republican administrations have always viewed FEMA as mainly a security agency. Therefore, they have tended to neglect the agency’s efforts to deal with natural disasters. After 9/11, the Bush administration reinforced that republican tradition. Eventually, the non-intervention of FEMA encapsulates a new definition of the State and its link with civil society. Far from the concept of "Associative State", advocated by Herbert Hoover and his fellow Republicans, the Bush administration has defined new mission and new goals for the Federal Government: in the field of domestic policy, non-intervention has to become the rule.