There is a nice review of the book at the link above. One of the excepts from the review follows:
"This trend in bureaucratic emergency managers is worsening, he says, since the 9/11 attacks, which escalated "fears of future episodes that may be even more deadly." He attributes such behaviors and attitudes to "a philosophy paralleling the drift in many other facets of American society. It reflects an oversubscription to the principles of bureaucratic management." He stresses that America is a decentralized society and thus requires an alternative theory of management. He promises, "The outlines of such a theory are just now beginning to be crystallized by a few scholars," suggesting that solving the problem is in its infancy."
There so many dynamic forces in play these days. Centralization and goal setting by the federal government, the expanded and now widely accepted use of the Incident Command System (ICS) and then there is the fast emerging social media culture of our society and web 2.0 technologies within government. Social media is all about decentralization, individual control/influence movement that will be running smack dab into our fairly ridged structures--like ICS. The world is changing and I think Drabek has caught a glimpse of the future.
