Introduction
Political equality is a situation where citizens in the country can vote to elect their leaders. It entails different aspects, where they have equal authority, participation and equal opportunities. Additionally, it involves equal involvement of citizen in different agendas political agendas without prejudice. Political equality also means that restrictions and laws apply similarly to people no matter the position in life. Political equality and political effectiveness are crucial in national security concerns and vital in an emergency department. In terms equality, robust equality is needed in the context of human rights and terms of a legal order.
Historically, national security concerns increase political effectiveness and public awareness, in the emergency department leading to broad commitment of resources. Such commitments of resources are seen to occur in areas of in different disasters threatening local communities. Despite the targeted attention to local communities, historically, there is a general lack of comprehensive, effective disaster management strategies. Also, there is a lack of availability of new resources targeting the local communities. Certainly, it can be suggested that the national security plan has less focus on emergency preparedness and disaster management (In Eman, 2013, p. 95).
Political Equality Effects on Disaster Management
Different attitudes lead to unequal funding of different government sectors, leading to restrained emergency preparedness at the local level. Emergency preparedness has not become a quick priority at the local level, despite federal mandates assigning more disaster preparedness functions to the local governments. Emergency preparedness were a recent development and grew out of recent emergency preparedness legislation. Therefore, there has been difficulty in sustaining governmental interest in public support and public support at the local level, unless a specific hazard was more imminent. Also, the main stakeholders and policy makers tend to underestimate the potential of different hazards. Similarly, policy makers are inclined to see potential hazard occurrence as having low probability, hence unwilling to bear costs of hazard preparedness, ambivalent towards mitigation of hazards and reluctant in imposing restrictions to private properties. Similarly, disaster management remains a low priority, not properly funded and seen as less important compared to other mandates like economic development.
Also, the emergency preparedness has been faced with the lack of a dynamic models connected to the community, to transform function in the contemporary public management role, which was once limited. Emergency functions have suffered from its earliest days because of scarce resources and lack of political supports. In different local jurisdictions, it is seen as a part time commitment to the already overburdened local administrations. There has been low support, lack of funding and low salience in the focus of emergency preparedness. Consequently, this has led to a narrow focus on disaster preparedness, disaster specific, limited to specific tasks and non-technical professional involvement. However recent changes show emergency management as being a bit more accurate and beginning of be specific to certain professions. In the same point, there is still strategic tension in regards to development of retards in the profession.
Additionally, there has been a lack of strategic approaches connecting the community concerns with emergency management. This leads to mitigation strategies which are not effective and are specifically applicable to different communities. This is because different communities are prone to different possible disasters; hence different strategies should be put in place to mitigate different possible emergencies depending on any community.
There are constraints in terms of institutional capacity building and participation in different community levels for long term planning activities. There have been challenges in regards of anchoring emergency management as a proactive principle. There has been a narrow definition of planning, in terms of anticipatory and planned responses to specific threats, emergencies, and hazards, due to lack of community participations. Consequently, this has led to the lack of operating efficiencies, lack of strategic adoptions and retrogressive mission enhancement. Therefore, for emergency response to be part of broader concerns and issues affecting the community (Wolensky, 1990, p. 710)
Many public officials are unconcerned and uninvolved about the field of emergency response, hence unequal participation of different vital organizations in emergency preparedness. Examination of emergency response literature shows that, strategic motivation for emergency response teams arose from challenges of responding to immediate and specific disasters; rather than long term planning and recognition of opportunities. Thus emergency management issues were of low salience in most communities and states. Public administrators and public officials in most local communities are seen not to be able to comprehend the nature of public response function. The emergency management still has a basic assumption that their function and concerns should primarily be based on fast responders.
National security concerns in the emergency department face the challenge of managing new realities.
Recommendations
Perhaps, the current crisis can be given renewed attention which may bring a strategic component to the political aspects in serving different communities. Public managers should maximize available resources to help in attaining value through the resources. It is important for emergency managers to study strategic concepts and leadership in managing disasters. Evidently, such concepts have been applied to implementation and analysis of different public management functions. Focus should be kept on organizational and administrative concepts and analysis in the prescriptive analysis of the subject matter to help in deciding a point of view which is strategic.
Afterwards, there should be a new conceptual framework intended for the organizational team, to serve as a theme in implementation. There should be an emergency framework with a strategic approach connecting broader community issues with emergency management. Thus preventing emergency services from being an area of low salience, scarce resources, low community support and limited constrained effectiveness.
Emergency management organizations should see themselves as part of dynamic social and political settings which they work, thus allowing them to adapt, identify opportunities and see challenges; they create long term roles and plan community development. Emergency and public managers should maximize the values of attained resources. There should be proactive initiation of public enterprise to ensure disaster management teams attain the intended success in disaster response situations.
Sustainable community development should be achieved through enhancing public values through emergency management, depending on communities they intend to serve. Emergency management should be based on annexation of public actors and institutions in planning strategic development, which will attain sustainability. This involvement will mean that the community can withstand and overcome any threat, disasters or hazards. Importantly, hazard mitigation should be tied to a specific concept of sustainability. Public involvement value in an attempt to achieve sustainability. Therefore, there is a need to ensure broad participation of different actors in different levels to ensure that they influence community planning process and achieve sustainability (Drabek, 2001, p. 78).
Also, mitigation is an emergency management role or function, closely tied to the sustainability concept. Local mitigation is crucial in mitigation of different hazards realization that hazards are rarely unexpected most of the time. Therefore, with this mentality, hazard mitigation will take the form of advanced action, where to reduce and mitigate potential costs and impacts associated with hazards.
Certainly, historic events like different the Indian generated tsunami in 4th December 2004, which hit the coastal Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and other countries show the rising costs generated by natural disasters. The regions took over five years to recover from the tsunami, with approximate pledge for money world- wide estimated at 2.3 billion Euros or 3 billion U.S dollars. Therefore, preeminent objectives of disaster management options, should involve sustainability as a key in mitigation of hazards; thus preventing catastrophic losses due to such events.
Similarly, policies should be put in place to advance planning to help in mitigating different disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, floods and hurricanes. This will be vital in reduced vulnerability of involved communities and reduction of recurrent impacts of such catastrophic events when they occur.
Additionally, new management options should focus on mitigation, specifically structural mitigation; thus increasing damage resistance and resilience. Emphasis should also be placed on hazard mitigation to enhance the impact and scope and bring management of such hazards in a broader arena. Planning should be extended to all community planning; this incorporates economic, social and environmental wellbeing, which contributes to present and future wellbeing.
Conclusion
There should be an emphasis on political equality in emergency response management. Lack of such equality may most of the time contribute to negative impacts to the emergency response management. There should be broad participation of the public and local communities to ensure responsible and sustainable choices are made to mitigation of different emergency situations. Also, political good will in an attempt to mitigate different emergencies. Also, sustainable communities should be built through inclusion of social, political and economical as key factors in the mitigation process.
References
Drabek, T. E. (2001). Disaster warning and evacuation responses by private business employees.
Disasters, 25(1), 76-94.
In Erman, E., In Näsström, S., & Palgrave Connect (Online service). (2013). Political equality in
Transnational democracy.
Moore, M. H. (1995). Creating public value: Strategic management in government. Harvard
Schneider, R. O. (2004). A strategic overview of the “new” emergency management.
Unpublished manuscript.
Wolensky, R. P., & Wolensky, K. C. (1990). Local Government's Problem with Disaster
Management: A Literature Review and Structural Analysis1. Review of Policy Research, 9(4), 703-725.
