Weathering the Storm? Norm Conflict and Adaptation in the Evolution of the Disaster Relief Regime Complex

This study examines the evolution of the disaster relief regime complex (DRRC), a loosely coordinated set of intergovernmental organizations, the Red Cross Movement, non-governmental organizations, and international mechanisms tasked with managing disaster response and disaster risk reduction. We argue that the DRRC’s adaptation—its ability to prepare and respond to disasters effectively and in a coordinated manner—over time hinges primarily on the management of norm conflict between humanitarianism and statist conceptions of sovereignty. We expect the prioritization of statist sovereignty over humanitarianism to result in a maladaptive regime complex. The reconciliation of these norms, on the other hand, is expected to be more conducive to an adaptive DRRC. Next, analyzing the DRRC from the 1920s to the 2020s, we show that the prioritization of statist sovereignty resulted in a largely maladaptive regime in the interwar and Cold War eras. Norm reconciliation and a more contingent conception of sovereignty in the post–Cold War era resulted in a more adaptive, though uneven and contested, DRRC. We consider additional drivers of regime adaptation—disaster intensity, institutional differentiation and hierarchy, and advocacy—and find that they do shape the DRRC, but in less influential and consistent manners than the broader normative environment.