| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Natural disasters have become a heightened security issue in the last decade. Mitigating and responding to disasters, such as the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia and the 2011 earthquake in Japan, reflect a new security agenda that has spread across the globe and infiltrated most regional organizations. At first glance, the creation of regional programmes on disaster risk management (DRM) appears to be driven by the functional preferences of states. However, a comparison of ten regional organizations reveals some curious ambiguities. Despite different threat perceptions, financial budgets and geographical environments of regional organizations, a majority of states have formed DRM programmes that exhibit highly standardized features in terms of language, the referent points of protection and the apparent motivations for cooperation. World society theory is used to explain these striking similarities with reference to the global cultural system. This article also illustrates the analytical purchase of world society theory in understanding cooperation through regional organizations.
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