Disasters Fast and Slow: The View from Policy History

In his contribution to the roundtable Patrick S. Roberts considers ways that historical approaches to studying disasters give political scientists tools with which to analyze how what happens after disaster is in part a product of prior political and social arrangements. Historical approaches, in contrast to panel data and contemporary large-N policy studies, also show the degree to which acute disasters can unfreeze political and social arrangements and allow for new, imaginative possibilities.