Private goods and services contracts: Increased emergency response capacity or increased vulnerability?

The United States public sector increasingly contracts with and relies on private firms to provide public goods. While this has brought efficiency gains in many contexts, in the disaster response context, these gains may be offset by increasing vulnerability to the public emergency response system by making it subject to the fragility of lean supply chains. Public-private contracts rely on the private law enforcement regime, an analysis of which indicates that there may be disincentives for private contractors to perform contractual obligations as disasters disrupt efficient supply chains and increase the cost of performance. This article argues that increasing public sector reliance on private contractor performance under extreme stress and uncertainty increases the complexity and interdependence of component parts of the disaster response system, key predictors of system failure. This article addresses the challenge of relying on private firms to provide public goods during a disaster and suggests several possibilities to increase reliability.