Outside the Organizational Box: Local Emergency Managers and Performance Regimes∗

To manage the uncertainty and complexity inherent in dealing with extreme events, local emergency managers have been tasked with the creation of an extensive network of supportive actors and organizations. The expectation is that these networks, or per-formance regimes, will facilitate collaboration and ultimately, aid in task completion. In this paper, we find evidence that collaboration has taken root in localities, but that these roots remain somewhat shallow. Moreover we find that the amount of collab-oration varies: county emergency managers interact more with governmental actors, be they inside or outside the county, than with nongovernmental actors. Finally, the explanation for the patterns we uncover varies, although the amount of risk and the capacity of the county are important determinants