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The Failure of the Nonregime

How Katrina Exposed New Orleans as a Regimeless City

Loyola University-New Orleans

Matthew O. Thomas

California State University, Chico

Hurricane Katrina’s effect on New Orleans raised serious questions about governmental preparedness and response. New Orleans operates without a stable and long-lasting partnership among resource providers, and the absence of a regime greatly affected how it readied for and reacted to Hurricane Katrina. We employ regime analysis to identify how three key differences between regimes and nonregimes impeded New Orleans’s ability to respond to this event. New Orleans lacks an understood agenda; it depends on issue-based coalitions rather than more permanent governing arrangements; and it ineffectively targets resources in the absence of a scheme of cooperation. These characteristics place New Orleans and other nonregime cities in a much more precarious position than urban areas with regimes, and this crisis exacerbated the negative effects of this nonregime environment.

Key Words: regime • New Orleans • Hurricane Katrina • nonregime

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