Musical Chairs?: Government Reorganization in Response to Terrorism
Presentation
Overview
Overview
Description
When new problems arise in a political system governments respond in a variety of ways. One way is by reorganizing their administrative structures. Reorganization suggests that the new problem is important and significantly different from others confronted by the government, which requires adaptation. Reorganization may take the form of creating new bureaucratic entities (departments/ministries, or agencies) or redrawing the jurisdiction of existing bureaucratic entities (moving agencies from one ministry to another to meet new policy demands), encourage the formation of new epistemic communities to research the problem and evaluate policies, or create new cabinet level working groups to oversee and coordinate relevant policies. No matter the exact form of the reorganization, that fact that a government is reorganizing indicates an effort to create new lines of authority within the administrative architecture of government to address the problem, suggesting the problem is considered a major national priority. The question this raises is: ‘are governments treating terrorist threats as an A-list security threat?’
