Risk Societies in World Politics: Overcoming Disasters Together

Abstract

The disasters that have occurred in the last decade are perceived as large in scale, destructive and complex to deal with. At the same time, the existing tools of study and the common division of natural from technological disasters are questioned. The risk societies theory, developed by Ulrich Beck (1992, 1999 and 2009), urges paradigmatic shift, acknowledging that institutionalized scientific knowledge and technical expertise have triggered the proliferation and worsening of risks rather than their neutralization. Beck’s theory has been explored by disaster scholars (Williams, 2008b; Brunsma and Picou, 2008) as a powerful tool of analysis of today’s societies, characterized by rising insecurity and uncertainty due to multiple potential risks and the limited capabilities of the states and international organizations to overcome these risks on their own. Since cooperation is crucial to deal with risks, cooperation between the two leading regional risk communities in the transatlantic area — the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) — in dealing with natural disasters is analysed in this chapter as a test case of the international response to natural disasters in the perspective of the risk societies theory. EU—NATO disaster cooperation is a good test case because, first, disaster aid includes both development and security.