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Exploring the administrative mechanism of China's Paired Assistance to Disaster Affected Areas programme
Author(s) -
Zhong Kaibin,
Lu Xiaoli
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
disasters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.744
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1467-7717
pISSN - 0361-3666
DOI - 10.1111/disa.12262
Subject(s) - mandate , incentive , accountability , china , competition (biology) , mechanism (biology) , politics , emergency management , business , poison control , public administration , political science , economics , medicine , law , environmental health , market economy , ecology , philosophy , epistemology , biology
The Paired Assistance to Disaster Affected Areas (PADAA) programme is a mutual aid initiative with Chinese characteristics, which speeded up the process of restoring and reconstructing regions affected by the Wenchuan earthquake on 12 May 2008.[Note 5. For an earlier version of this paper see Zhong ...] The PADAA is an efficient instrument for catastrophe recovery, yet it remains a mysterious mechanism to many members of disaster management communities. This paper aims to lift the veil on it by assessing its origins and evolution. It draws on the multi‐level moderated competition model to explain how the PADAA functions within the Chinese administrative system. The country's top‐down political system allows the central authority to mandate provincial and local governments from more economically developed regions to assist devastated areas with post‐disaster reconstruction. The practices of local accountability complement vertical control by giving leaders from donor regions strong incentives to accomplish assigned reconstruction tasks, resulting in intense competition between them.