Routledge International Order and the Politics of Disaster

In this indispensable and comprehensive text, Scott D. Watson critically examines the current understanding of international order that underpins international disaster management and disaster diplomacy. Based on empirical analysis of the three international disaster management regimes - disaster relief, disaster risk reduction, and disaster migration - and case studies of disaster diplomacy in the United States, Egypt and China, Watson argues that international disaster management and disaster diplomacy are not simply efforts to reduce the impact of disasters or to manage bilateral relations but to reinforce key beliefs about the larger international order. Challenging the conventional understandings of disasters as natural, as exogenous shocks, or as unintended and accidental outcomes of the current order, this text shows how the ideological foundations of the current heterogenous international order produce recurrent disasters. International Order and the Politics of Disaster is a vital source for undergraduate or graduate students interested in international responses to disasters and complex humanitarian emergencies, forced migration and displacement, as well as climate change and development. Review "Watson provides an erudite and revealing analysis on international disaster management by sensitizing us to the politics of disasters, the constitutive power of the international order and its complex casual relation with disaster management. Impeccably researched and clearly written, this book is a must read for undergraduates as well as the seasoned academic." ― Simon Hollis, Swedish Defence University About the Author Scott D. Watson is associate professor of International Relations and chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of British Columbia (2006) and is the author of The Securitisation of Humanitarian Migration (Routledge, 2009).