After the Storm: International Organization-Host Government Relationships and Disaster Recovery

Disasters are becoming increasingly frequent. They disproportionately affect lower-income countries, and particularly small island states. International organizations (IOs) work on increasingly complex responses to disasters, particularly in low-income countries. They implement projects that range from providing food and temporary shelter, to helping farmers recover their farms. While some of these projects are considered highly effective, others are not. This paper asks: why are some projects implemented and/or funded by IOs less effective than others? While existing work treats IOs as standalone entities and emphasizes static features of the IO and host country, I show that dynamic, interaction-based processes between the IO and host government are central to IO project effectiveness. I argue that the IO’s orientation towards the local government influences the level of contestation in their relationship. High levels of contestation in turn undermine project effectiveness. I identify two ideal types of IO orientation: authoritative, where the IO comes in and tells the government what to do, which is met with pushback from the government; and collaborative, where the IO comes in with the aim to support the government where the government deems necessary, and collaborate with them as equal partners to implement a project. This paper focuses on the local government officers who are key to their sector and the projects implemented in their regions. Because of their central role IOs rely on them to implement their projects. High levels of contestation therefore undermine project effectiveness, as it undermines the willingness of local government officers to work on the project. To make this argument, I draw on four months of fieldwork in Dominica, a small island state in the Caribbean. I focus on the disaster response to Hurricane Maria, which devastated Dominica in 2017. I leverage participant observation as well as 113 interviews with a total of 122 participants including IO and government employees, and disaster-affected residents. I focus on three disaster-response projects in the agriculture. This paper builds a theoretical framework to understand how the IO-government relationship influences project effectiveness. It therewith opens a new avenue for understanding IO operations on the ground, by focusing on cases of post-disaster assistance. Moreover, it shows how even globally operational IOs are dependent on host governments to implement projects, a feature of IO projects that is often missed.