Vulnerability of Small Island Development States. Does good governance help?

Abstract

Small island states have in recent decades been identified as particularly vulnerable to natural disasters and climate change. Violent winds, floods, and draughts have had severe consequences for millions of people and currently present an increasingly significant challenge for development and poverty alleviation in small islands. However, although islands tend to have similar geographical features, natural hazards produce widely different outcomes in different island states, indicating great variation in resilience. While some islands seem to cope and adapt fairly well, others suffer tremendously. That is the impact of natural hazards of the same physical magnitude ranges from going more or less unnoticed or causing only small disturbances to resulting in severe catastrophes. The overall objective of this paper is to explore the suggested sources of this variation further. More specifically, with the point of departure in theories about how institutions and social contracts affect collective action and adaptive capacities, this paper sets out to investigate how political institutions such as democracy, corruption, and government effectiveness impact the overall resilience of island states. While claims over the importance of institutions are well abound in the literature, there is a serious lack of systematic empirical accounts testing the validity of such claims. This shortcoming is addressed by this study’s quantitative, time series cross-sectional analysis using data from the International Disaster Risk database and the Quality of Government dataset.