Devastating earthquakes facilitating civil societies in developing countries: across-national analysis |
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Authors: | Yuan Yuan Sima Zomorodian Muhammad Hashim |
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Affiliation: | 1. Uncertainty Decision-Making Laboratory, Sichuan University, Chengdu, People’s Republic of China;2. Faculty of Management Sciences, National Textile University, Faisalabad, Pakistan |
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Abstract: | ABSTRACTDeveloping countries, which often have emerging or fledgling civil societies, are vulnerable to disasters, and especially devastating earthquakes. The long-term influence of devastating earthquakes on civil societies in developing countries is a critical research topic while receives relatively little attention. From a comprehensive literature review, this study identified four key areas of the civil society: civic participation, voluntary organizations, social capital, and democratic governance, and then examined four devastating earthquakes in India, Iran, Pakistan and China in the first decade of the twenty-first century as case studies, to identify the effects these earthquakes had on these four areas. It was found that from a long-term perspective, while the earthquakes strengthened the civil society, they had beneficial but limited effects. We argue that by promoting local community participation, facilitating extensive non-government organization (NGO) cooperation, and streamlining state-civil society relationships, an enabling environment can be developed to further sustain the advances made by a civil society after a disaster. |
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Keywords: | Devastating earthquake civil society developing country cross-national analysis |
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