Interagency Collaboration in City Emergency Management Network: A Case Study on the Super Ministry Reform in China.

The complexity of emergencies continues to increase; thus, responding to them often stretches beyond the capabilities and capacities of any single public agency. Hence, collaboration among public agencies is to prepare, respond to, and recover from emergencies. However, collaboration among public agencies seldom takes place in an effective or efficient manner during emergencies. With the discussion of resource dependence theory and social capital, we believe different types of collaborative relationships exist in the collaborative network, owing to network structure. This paper takes the Super Ministry Reform of Emergency Management in China as a case study. By evaluating network efficiency and classifying collaborative relationships of involved government agencies, we find four different types: resource-redundant, resource-complementary, resource-dependent, and resource-isolated. The different influences of collaborative relationships precisely explain why the reform is not that effective, although it has merged several core departments in the emergency management network. These findings remind us to consider network structure and collaboration types when making institutional design. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.