Disasters have the potential to act as focusing events, which can increase attention to disaster-related problems and encourage policy action. Our understanding of the political characteristics associated with disaster policy making is under-developed, but we know that these characteristics may be dissimilar from non-disaster policy areas, especially concerning the coalitions of policy actors in the disaster policy process. Coalitions in disaster policy processes may be less likely to form, may look very different, and may have different goals than in non-disaster domains. Our understanding of the emergence, composition, and purpose of coalitions in disaster policy is lacking. Here we draw from prior theory and case observations to define and describe the characteristics of a disaster policy subsystem and build a typology of coalitions that may appear within such a subsystem, providing a foundation upon which scholars can work to study coalition dynamics in disaster policy subsystems. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.