Crises and disasters feature high on political and public agendas around the world. Practition-ers wrestle with the challenge to provide protection while maintaining legitimacy. They pine forinsights that lie at the heart of public administration: designing effective institutions and preserv-ing transparency; enabling and empowering citizens without undermining a coordinated response;balancing long-term risks against short-term needs; bridging the divide between theory and prac-tice, and between the public and private sectors. But in the debates about designing institutions thatprotect against transboundary threats and critical infrastructure failures, the public administrationcommunity is strangely absent. It has parked itself on the sideline, concerning itself with the routineprocesses of governance. In this article, we argue that the time has come for public administrationscholars to incorporate crisis and disaster management into the main research agendas of the eld.
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