Politics and Planning

Most politicians are crisis managers. They wait for events to emerge – or streams converge, as Jill pointed out - before deciding to move forward. A reason for this strategy is boosting popularity by addressing issues that the press has been largely covering and the population is very sensitive about. This public act aims to reduce the political cost of advocating for structural changes by preventing constituents from seeing leaders as demagogue futurists or careless administrators towards actual and urgent social issues.

The recent mine event in Chile illustrates the idea above. After spending many days trapped underground, the life of the 30 miners started being scrutinized by the national and international media. The event soon attracted a large TV audience and readers and viewers started following the news like avid soap opera fans. On the rescue day, journalists from all over packed the benches located around the mine. Once the operation successfully finished, the president promised to carry out an extensive reform of the labor conditions to guarantee that no more labors would risk their lives at work sites. The popularity of the president went sky high as the Chileans applauded this “noble” - and political timing - effort.

However, other professionals who work for the collective good consider that politics is more than providing immediate responses to crisis. Public administration is about planning and anticipating disasters that are likely to cause social damage. These types of leaders usually tap into statistics, scientific studies, and narratives to raise awareness for latent problems and, as a result, to reduce the political cost of addressing a problem that has not yet deeply affected the social well-being or hit the news.

City authorities of Hamburg in Germany are literally rising up the city based on the likelihood of sea-level rise. These policy-makers have convinced the electorate that large investments today in infrastructure would avoid greater problems tomorrow. The political instrument for this initiative without putting at risk the political power of the legislator was partnering with the media to raise awareness and come up with different scenarios to the issue. The people of Hamburg, therefore, were convinced that they would be better-off if investments were not put off.

In conclusion, politicians are expected to be crisis managers as well as urban planners. The population pays taxes to make sure that current issues will be addressed but also that predictable problems are addressed. I once heard from an authority the following: “In Hawai’i, be prepared, in October, natural disasters always happen”. S/he forgot, however, to define the problem and the preparation for these disasters. We, public administrators, are expected to have these answers.

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/011536.html