Preventive Paradigm

Government authority has diffused from the federal government to the state and local sub-units—creating less distinguishable lines of governmental authority during the conduct of public programs. Among the reinvention movement, the solutions that are shaping authority patterns become more “flexible [and] responsive,” creating more “effective organizations” of power. As the federal government gains more authority than the state and local governments, the necessity to coordinate actions to achieve complementary goals becomes greater and coordinated action is used to reduce “redundancies and minimize weak lines in any integrated system of security precautions.” Administrative actions are therefore top-down in approach, allowing for state and local governments to simply enact policy rather than be instrumental part in forming policy. Forming new governmental authority, a preventative paradigm has been created for “security precautions” that allows new public management imperatives which favor of the federal government for decision-making. Transitive policy domains are promulgated by the examples of Homeland Security in dealing preemptively for terrorist activities and FEMA’s intergovernmental failures after Hurricane Katrina.