Managerial Negligence and Disaster: March Reading Advice

In this book, Wolfgang Seibel, Professor of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Konstanz (Germany), examines the consequences of poor public management on citizen safety. He provides an in depth analysis of several concrete cases in which the collapse of structures built or supervised by public authorities resulted in significant loss of life:

• The West Gate Bridge in Melbourne (1970)
• The I-35W Bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis (2007)
• The Canterbury Television building in Christchurch (2011)
• The Ice skating Rink in Bad Reichenhall (2006)

While engineering and technical safety are often emphasized, Seibel highlights the central role played by managerial, institutional, and bureaucratic negligence in these failures.