Charles Parker

Preventable Catastrophe? The Hurricane Katrina Disaster Revisited This article probes the warning-response failures that left the city of New Orleans vulnerable to catastrophic hurricanes and the inability of local, state, and federal authorities to mount an adequa...

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Katrina taught us that failing to act on known risks has devastating consequences. Let’s not forget. Let’s not repeat it. 🌀
📘 Full article: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

FEMA Employees Warn That Trump Is Gutting Disaster Response

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That’s why the current effort by President Trump to gut FEMA and dump disaster costs on the states is alarming. It reflects a willful ignorance for the hard-won lessons of Katrina. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/c...

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The core lesson: resilience is not built in the storm. It’s built before! Sustained investment, strong federal coordination, and a commitment to learning from past failures are all needed.

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And politically? Natural hazard preparedness was deprioritized. Homeland Security focused almost exclusively on terrorism. Warnings about hurricanes were drowned out in a crowded, reactive policy space.

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Organizationally, emergency planning was fragmented. Key agencies weren’t aligned, and FEMA’s role had been weakened by its integration into a terrorism-focused DHS after 9/11.

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Psychologically, overconfidence and wishful thinking led officials to believe the levees would hold. Many discounted repeated warnings as alarmist. Those assumptions proved fatal.

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This wasn’t just a FEMA failure. The failures stretched across federal, state, and local governments. Katrina was a long-predicted event. It became a disaster because many responsible authorities didn’t act on those warnings.

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In our article, my colleagues and I examined the Katrina disaster through three perspectives—psychological, organizational, and agenda-political—to better understand how and why things went so wrong.

Preventable Catastrophe? The Hurricane Katrina Disaster Revisited This article probes the warning-response failures that left the city of New Orleans vulnerable to catastrophic hurricanes and the inability of local, state, and federal authorities to mount an adequa...

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🌀Twenty years ago, Hurricane Katrina laid bare how denial, fragmented institutions, and crowded political agendas can turn a long-predicted storm into a full-blown catastrophe.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Happy to see this paper out in the July issue of CP! Using the case of abortion policy, I argue that clientelistic parties engage in strategic, mutually beneficial interactions with influential interest groups when material exchanges no longer guarantee office.

Only two years left of world’s carbon budget to meet 1.5C target, scientists warn Breaching threshold would ramp up catastrophic weather events, further increasing human suffering

Amid global conflict & crisis, it’s easy to lose sight of the climate emergency. But we have just 2 yrs to stay within the 1.5C carbon budget. Breaching it will bring more extreme weather & misery. The window is closing, but action now can still avert the worst.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Off to a great start!

YouTube video by CNDS Sweden CNDS webinar 7th may 2025 Coping with disasters

Check out our latest Webinar " Coping with disasters - short and long term psychological impacts of Natural Hazards"

youtu.be/HKgq5Byq9pk

So happy to see this article written with @fursthenrik.bsky.social published!

🧵1/ Are primaries bad for political diversity? Conventional wisdom says yes—but our article in @wepsocial.bsky.social shows that candidate selection modes are not necessarily a bottleneck for representation, at least when it comes to demand. 🗳️👥 @sandrahkansson.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1080/0140...

Super happy to see this paper now in print! We show that parties which do not enter coalitions, but have formal (written) support agreements with minority cabinets- such as Tidö Agreement in Sweden - are likely to be punished at the next elections, similarly to junior coalition partners.

The legal issues raised by Trump sending the National Guard to L.A. President Trump is sending the National Guard to Los Angeles over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom by invoking rarely used federal powers.

Amid the Trump-Musk media circus, President Trump just did something deeply troubling: he invoked Title 10 to send National Guard troops to LA without the California governor’s consent. Rare, alarming & a direct threat to state sovereignty & democratic norms. www.latimes.com/california/s...

Pretty sure Elon musk just discovered the Premium edition of buyer’s remorse.

Anna Jeglinska: Co-nationals under construction: Poland’s diaspora policy 1989–2023 - Uppsala University

Tomorrow at the Department of Government, Anna Jeglinska defends her thesis Co-nationals under construction: Poland’s diaspora policy 1989–2023, with @harrismylonas.bsky.social as external reviewer.

Location: Brusewitzsalen, Östra Ågatan 19, Uppsala
Time: 13:15

www.uu.se/en/events/de...

Screenshot of a journal article abstract from West European Politics, titled “Inclusive or exclusive? Candidate selection methods do not affect descriptive representation” by Michal Grahn and Sandra Håkansson from the Department of Government, Uppsala University, Sweden. The article is marked as open access and published by Routledge. The abstract text is highlighted in yellow and states that while exclusive candidate selection methods (e.g., selection committees) are often thought to produce more descriptively representative outcomes than inclusive methods (e.g., primaries), such claims are usually based on cross-sectional comparisons. The authors conducted a conjoint experiment in Sweden involving 6,400 party members and 1,300 selection committee members, assessing preferences for candidate profiles based on gender, age, and immigrant background. The findings show that both groups exhibited similar preferences for underrepresented candidates across both selection modes. The study concludes that both inclusive and exclusive procedures can equally promote descriptive representation within supportive institutional contexts. Below the abstract, the listed keywords are: Political recruitment; descriptive representation; political parties; primaries; conjoint experiment.

A dot plot titled "Candidate preferences among rank-and-file party members and SCMs, in primary and ballot creation contexts." The y-axis lists candidate characteristics: Gender (Men, Women), Immigrant background (No, Yes), Age (18–35, 36–64, 65+), Education (No higher education, University degree), and Employment sector (Public, Private). The x-axis represents marginal means, ranging from 0.4 to 0.55, with a vertical dashed reference line at 0.5. For each characteristic, three groups are shown with their respective point estimates and 95% confidence intervals: Red squares for “Party members, primary context” Blue circles for “Selectors, primary context” Green diamonds for “Selectors, ballot creation context” The graph shows how different groups of selectors and party members vary in their marginal means when evaluating candidate characteristics. Confidence intervals are horizontal bars, and all estimates are clustered around the 0.5 mark, with some group differences, especially notable in age and education. Below the figure, a note explains that the values represent marginal means with 95% confidence intervals, calculated separately for each group, with standard errors clustered at the respondent level.

Online first: "Inclusive or exclusive? Candidate selection methods do not affect descriptive representation" by @grahn.bsky.social & @sandrahkansson.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1080/0140...

#AcademicSky #Polisky

@timothysnyder.bsky.social
@dziblatt.bsky.social
@anneapplebaum.bsky.social
@scottlucas.bsky.social
Nobel prize winning economists e.g.:
dacemoglumit.bsky.social,
and Skytte prize winners
@skytteprize.bsky.social speak out e.g.:
@frankfukuyama.bsky.social
@juergenhabermas.bsky.social
and many more:

🎓 Qinya Feng’s PhD defense is underway!
A Genetically Informed Approach to Trust and Attitudes towards Immigration
Wishing you all the best, Qinya! 🌟👏 #PhDDefense #UppsalaUniversity

Twenty-one Skytte Prize winner in a joint letter in today's @financialtimes.com : “President Donald Trump and his administration are on a spectacularly dangerous path”

Read more here : www.skytteprize.com/news/twenty-...

How does rapid urban growth affect the risk of electoral violence in African cities? In a new article (open access in World Development), I find that cities growing more rapidly were at higher risk of electoral violence. doi.org/10.1016/j.wo... (1/9)

We just found out that SWEPSA has named Martin Jacobson’s PhD thesis the best thesis in Sweden! Congratulations!

Martin Jacobson "Land & Liberty: On the Natural Monopoly of Violence" - access it here: uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record...

see swepsa.org

Anahita Assadi’s PhD defence is underway now:
A Silent Revolution: How digital technologies are transforming public administration through the backdoor
Opponent is Jenny de Fine Licht
A big moment, go Anahita!

It’s the story of his life: fail, then claim victory.

Arctic Sea Ice is more important than you might think. As the climate warms, the amount of sea ice in the Arctic basin is reducing. This is leading to a wide range of impacts, the effects of which will be felt all around the world.

What happens in the Arctic, doesn't stay in the Arctic.

drtomharris.substack.com/p/arctic-sea...
#climatechange #arctic #seaice #albedo #ecology #weather #permafrost

Statsvetenskapliga institutionen utbildar valobservatörer i samarbete med Folke Bernadotte-akademin - Uppsala universitet

Election observation has emerged as an important institution for ensuring fair and conflict-free democratic elections. The Department of Government now trains election observers for the EU's and OSCE's election observation missions throughout the world, together with @fbafolke.bsky.social