As the world becomes increasingly centralized (think EU, WHO, and other agents of centralized decision-making), Hans-Hermann Hoppe makes a compelling case that decentralized decision-making is far more effective in managing crises and has the added bonus of limiting the degree to which powerful organizations are able to use such events to their own advantage. Find below links to his piece and one of my own articles which presents empirical evidence that decentralized governmental structures help to save lives during natural disaster events.
“Natural Disaster Impacts and Fiscal Decentralization” (Hideki Toya and Mark Skidmore), Land Economics. Vol. 89, No. 1, 2013.