Tom Birkland
Biographic Data
| ID | 1405500 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tom Birkland |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tom |
| FAMILY NAME | Birkland |
| SIGNATURE | BIRKLAND T |
| AFFILIATIONS | North Carolina State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3073-8471 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 837 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Individual Uncertainty and Policy Compliance During the Covid‐19 Pandemic
Ample scholarship examines the extent to which public policies in representative democracies reflect the priorities and needs of the public, often finding that individuals are unaware of many policy issues and policy responses. This may be especially true when issues of risk and scientific uncertainty are involved, which can be difficult for individuals to understand. Less is known, however, about the dynamics of public awareness on highly salien…
How proximity and trust of policy narrators motivate their audience
The effect of the narrator is understudied in the Narrative Policy Framework. We offer a systematic approach that details narrator definition, features (proximity to audience), and functions (audience trust). Informed by Construal Level Theory, we conducted an exploratory study ( n = 2268) that assigned proximal to distal narrator features (“your friend,” “your doctor,” “the CDC,” and a control “someone”) and affixed narrators to visual messages …
Policy Entrepreneurs, Crises, and Policy Change
Increasingly, policymaking takes place while extraordinary events threaten fundamental societal values. During turbulent times, policy entrepreneurs emerge as pivotal figures. They are energetic actors who pursue dynamic change in public policy and, whereas we know much about how they promote innovation and change in normal policymaking, we know less about how they behave in crises, and even less about how different crises influence policy entrep…
A conceptual framework for knowledge integration in cross-disciplinary collaborations
Narrative power in the narrative policy framework
The Narrative Policy Framework lacks clear and empirical explanations of power. Yet, the study of narratives is inherently the study of power in shaping policy outputs and decisions. We develop a conceptual model positing that expressions of power ( power to , with, and over ) may be discovered in narrative constructs (e.g., narrative structure, communication forum). We suggest that the dilemma of measuring the “unobserved” in power may be addres…
Learning from Crisis: Covid-19 Agenda and Policy Change and What it Means for a Future Research Agenda
The COVID-19 pandemic and crisis rapidly changed the public and policymaking agendas for governments worldwide. COVID-19 highlighted failures and problems associated with public health preparedness, economic vulnerability, emergency response protocols, and sector-specific issues in healthcare, education, and beyond. This increased attention to COVID-19 – and pandemic response broadly – led to significant emergency policy action by governors and p…
Covid-19 memorable messages as internal narratives: Stability and change over time
Characterizing the social-ecological system for inland freshwater salinization using fuzzy cognitive maps: Implications for Collective Management
Current regulatory tools are not well suited to address freshwater salinization in urban areas, and the conditions under which bottom-up management is likely to emerge remain unclear. We hypothesize that Elinor Ostrom’s social-ecological systems (SESs) framework can be used to explore how current understanding of salinization might foster or impede its collective management. We focus on the Occoquan Reservoir, a critical urban water supply in Nor…
Policy Style and The US Policy Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Rebuttal to Lawrence D. Brown’s Fomenters of Fiasco
Through the lens of policy style that we respectfully disagree with Professor Brown’s assessment of the United States’ botched COVID-19 pandemic response as being exclusively or even primarily explained by electoral concerns. Although we agree that the electoral concerns of many actors in the response were important, reducing every aspect of the botched policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic to an electoral calculus is far too narrow. It overlo…
Policy entrepreneurs and individuals: Influence and behavior in pandemic response
Policy entrepreneurs have traditionally been recognized for their ability to influence policymakers by framing policy problems and pairing them with preferred solutions. Does their influence extend to the public? We examine this question in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic in the United States. We analyze whether an individual's perception of a visible, national‐level policy entrepreneur, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infe…
Estimating the effect of policy entrepreneurship on individual vaccination behavior during the Covid‐19 pandemic
Most studies of policy entrepreneurship seek to understand how entrepreneurs influence the behavior of policy‐makers in the agenda‐setting or decision‐making phases of the policy process. Recent scholarship has sought to understand what role entrepreneurs might play in policy implementation by focusing on their ability to influence bureaucrats' discretion and behavior. However, these studies overlook the potentially critical influence of policy e…
Policy learning and change during crisis: Covid‐19 policy responses across six states
Whereas policy change is often characterized as a gradual and incremental process, effective crisis response necessitates that organizations adapt to evolving problems in near real time. Nowhere is this dynamic more evident than in the case of COVID‐19, which forced subnational governments to constantly adjust and recalibrate public health and disease mitigation measures in the face of changing patterns of viral transmission and the emergence of …
The United States in Chinese environmental policy narratives: Is there a trump effect
Drawing on insights from studies of environmental politics, the policy process, and the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), this study examines the Trump administration's influence on how the United States is characterized by Chinese environmental policy scholars. Using an NPF approach and policy narratives on the topic of global environmental governance, our empirical results suggest that the Trump administration has shifted Chinese environmental …
During Disaster: Refining the Concept of Focusing Events to Better Explain Long-Duration Crises
Potential focusing events are sudden, relatively rare events that reveal harm, or the potential for harm, are known to policymakers and the public virtually simultaneously, and work harms on a definable geographic area or community of interest. Focusing events can provide a powerful symbol of government failure, thereby allowing previously ignored issues to advance on the government agenda. We revisit this conceptualization of focusing events wit…
Addressing the contribution of indirect potable reuse to inland freshwater salinization
Governing in a Polarized Era: Federalism and the Response of U.S. State and Federal Governments to the Covid-19 Pandemic
How does the state of American federalism explain responses to COVID-19? State-by-state variations to the COVID-19 pandemic illustrate the political dynamics of “kaleidoscopic federalism,” under which there is no single prevailing principle of federalism. In the COVID-19 pandemic, features of kaleidoscopic federalism combined with shortcomings in the public health system under the Trump administration, leading to fragmented responses to the pande…
Citizen participation in disaster recovery projects and programmes in rural communities: A comparison of the Haiti earthquake and Hurricane Katrina
This study investigates predictors of local participation in recovery projects and programmes following Hurricane Katrina in the United States in 2005 and the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. Using two sets of survey data, it examines whether disaster impacts and social capital (social trust and civic engagement) are associated with disaster recovery participation and compares predictors of such engagement in the two locations. Multivariate logistic …
Conceptualizing Resilience
This commentary provides an overview of the idea of resilience, and acknowledges the challenges of defining and applying the idea in practice. The article summarizes a way of looking at resilience called a “resilience delta”, that takes into account both the shock done to a community by a disaster and the capacity of that community to rebound from that shock to return to its prior functionality. I show how different features of the community can …
Learning From Catastrophes: Strategies for Reaction and Response ‐ Edited by Howard Kunreuther and Michael Useem
Emergency Response, Doctrinal Confusion, and Federalism in the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was accompanied by intergovernmental blame casting and criticisms similar to that of Hurricane Katrina. The federal response was often viewed as slow, state officials were unsure of their role, and local officials complained that they were not adequately consulted. However, natural and oil pollution disasters have relief and regulatory regimes based on doctrines different from those governing natural disasters. Thi…
Retrospectives and Prospectives on Hurricane Katrina: Five Years and Counting
New Orleans’ recovery from the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 reflects a long, complex, contentious process that still is not complete. In this article, the authors explore the key factors that have supported and hindered recovery so far. Initial conditions within the city, the web of policy demands, as well as recent changes in law and procedures for the region are explored using a new model that may be applicable to other severe dis…
Disaster Research and Social Network Analysis: Examples of the Scientific Understanding of Human Dynamics at the National Science Foundation
Disasters, Catastrophes, and Policy Failure in the Homeland Security Era1
The September 11 attacks triggered federal policy changes designed to influence emergency management in the United States, even though these attacks did not suggest a need for a wholesale restructuring of federal policy in emergency management. Instead, for several reasons, federal policy's emphasis on terrorism and emergency management significantly degraded the nation's ability to address natural disasters. The federal government sought to crea…
Media Framing and Policy Change After Columbine
The 1999 Columbine school shooting incident in Colorado gained far more media attention across a broader range of issues than any school violence episode before or since. One might expect that Columbine would have had an influence on public opinion, public policy, and scholarship commensurate with the attention it gained. We find that the event did contribute in a limited but interesting way to scholarship on media framing. But the effect of Colu…
Environmental and socioeconomic dynamics of the Indian Ocean tsunami in Penang, Malaysia
This paper addresses some of the environmental and socioeconomic dimensions of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami on Penang, Malaysia. We aim to offer wide access to unique and perishable data, while at the same time providing insight to ongoing debates about hazards, vulnerability and social capital. Our social survey examines some of the dynamics that shaped the tsunami impact, response and recovery process. While in terms of lives lost Penang may n…
Focusing Events, Mobilization, and Agenda Setting
The policy literature often mentions the agenda-setting influence of focusing events, but few policy studies systematically examine the dynamics of these events. This article closes this gap by examining focusing events, group mobilization and agenda-setting. Using natural disasters and industrial accidents as examples, most focusing events change the dominant issues on the agenda in a policy domain, they can lead to interest group mobilization, …
Policy Entrepreneurs, Crises, and Policy Change
Increasingly, policymaking takes place while extraordinary events threaten fundamental societal values. During turbulent times, policy entrepreneurs emerge as pivotal figures. They are energetic actors who pursue dynamic change in public policy and, whereas we know much about how they promote innovation and change in normal policymaking, we know less about how they behave in crises, and even less about how different crises influence policy entrep…
Lessons of Disaster: Policy Change after Catastrophic Events
Theories and Models of Policy Change and LearningKnowledge, Learning, and Policy ChangeA Model of Event-Related Policy ChangeLearning and Lessons in This StudyMethodsThe Case StudiesConclusion 2. September 11, Learning, and Policy ChangeWhat is Homeland Security?Events and Reports: The Emergence of the Homeland Security ProblemThe September 11 Attacks as Focusing EventsSeptember 11, Policy Failure, Learning, and ChangeConclusions: Learning after …
Is Federalism the Reason for Policy Failure in Hurricane Katrina
Governmental responses to Hurricane Katrina are generally cited as policy failures. Media and popular analyses focus on the federal government's policy failures in hazard preparedness, response, and recovery. Meanwhile, disaster experts realize that disaster response is a shared intergovernmental responsibility. We examine the federal nature of natural disaster policy in the US to consider whether federalism, or other factors, had the greatest in…
Governing in a Polarized Era: Federalism and the Response of U.S. State and Federal Governments to the Covid-19 Pandemic
How does the state of American federalism explain responses to COVID-19? State-by-state variations to the COVID-19 pandemic illustrate the political dynamics of “kaleidoscopic federalism,” under which there is no single prevailing principle of federalism. In the COVID-19 pandemic, features of kaleidoscopic federalism combined with shortcomings in the public health system under the Trump administration, leading to fragmented responses to the pande…
The World Changed Today: Agenda-Setting and Policy Change in the Wake of the September 11 Terrorist Attacks
The September 11 terrorist attacks constitute a focusing event that have been said to have "changed everything" in America. However, the literature on focusing events, policy change, and the policy process suggests that the "windows of opportunity" opened by focusing events like the September 11 attacks do not automatically equate to policy change. This paper considers whether and to what extent the agenda and policies have changed as a result of…
Media Framing and Policy Change After Columbine
The 1999 Columbine school shooting incident in Colorado gained far more media attention across a broader range of issues than any school violence episode before or since. One might expect that Columbine would have had an influence on public opinion, public policy, and scholarship commensurate with the attention it gained. We find that the event did contribute in a limited but interesting way to scholarship on media framing. But the effect of Colu…
Policy learning and change during crisis: Covid‐19 policy responses across six states
Whereas policy change is often characterized as a gradual and incremental process, effective crisis response necessitates that organizations adapt to evolving problems in near real time. Nowhere is this dynamic more evident than in the case of COVID‐19, which forced subnational governments to constantly adjust and recalibrate public health and disease mitigation measures in the face of changing patterns of viral transmission and the emergence of …
Guns, Hollywood, and School Safety: Defining the School‐Shooting Problem Across Public Arenas
Objective. Research in agenda setting has demonstrated that dramatic news events can drive particular issues to the top of the media and governmental agendas. The objective of this study is to analyze how different aspects of an event‐driven problem compete for attention in those arenas. Methods. The method is content analysis of media coverage and congressional legislative activity following the 1999 Columbine High School shootings. Results. The…
During Disaster: Refining the Concept of Focusing Events to Better Explain Long-Duration Crises
Potential focusing events are sudden, relatively rare events that reveal harm, or the potential for harm, are known to policymakers and the public virtually simultaneously, and work harms on a definable geographic area or community of interest. Focusing events can provide a powerful symbol of government failure, thereby allowing previously ignored issues to advance on the government agenda. We revisit this conceptualization of focusing events wit…
Emergency Response, Doctrinal Confusion, and Federalism in the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was accompanied by intergovernmental blame casting and criticisms similar to that of Hurricane Katrina. The federal response was often viewed as slow, state officials were unsure of their role, and local officials complained that they were not adequately consulted. However, natural and oil pollution disasters have relief and regulatory regimes based on doctrines different from those governing natural disasters. Thi…
Retrospectives and Prospectives on Hurricane Katrina: Five Years and Counting
New Orleans’ recovery from the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 reflects a long, complex, contentious process that still is not complete. In this article, the authors explore the key factors that have supported and hindered recovery so far. Initial conditions within the city, the web of policy demands, as well as recent changes in law and procedures for the region are explored using a new model that may be applicable to other severe dis…
Citizen participation in disaster recovery projects and programmes in rural communities: A comparison of the Haiti earthquake and Hurricane Katrina
This study investigates predictors of local participation in recovery projects and programmes following Hurricane Katrina in the United States in 2005 and the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. Using two sets of survey data, it examines whether disaster impacts and social capital (social trust and civic engagement) are associated with disaster recovery participation and compares predictors of such engagement in the two locations. Multivariate logistic …
Disasters, Catastrophes, and Policy Failure in the Homeland Security Era1
The September 11 attacks triggered federal policy changes designed to influence emergency management in the United States, even though these attacks did not suggest a need for a wholesale restructuring of federal policy in emergency management. Instead, for several reasons, federal policy's emphasis on terrorism and emergency management significantly degraded the nation's ability to address natural disasters. The federal government sought to crea…
Business and Political Dimensions in Disaster Management
A considerable and growing body of crisis management literature seeks to help business managers address disasters. Notwithstanding, the business literature on crisis management fails fully to understand the policy and political aspects of business disasters, and concentrates on prescriptive, managerial issues that show disregard and sometimes disdain for plural democracy. We illustrate our argument with a review of the existing crisis management …
Learning and Policy Improvement After Disaster: The Case of Aviation Security
This article considers whether policy makers in the aviation security field have learned from actual or apparent aviation security breaches in the late 1980s through 2001. The author finds that the loss of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 and of TWA Flight 800 in 1996 did lead to greater policy-making attention to a relatively narrow range of issues raised by these events. The author also finds that the September 11 terrorist attacks led to a comprehens…
Law, Policymaking, and the Policy Process: Closing the Gaps
Public policy scholars and public Law scholars often study the same substantive issues and have similar theoretical interests Yet students of the public policy process rarely consider the courts as policymakers in the same manner as do their public law counterpart We seek to explain this difference in approaches between the two Subfield on the question of the courts as policymakers, and we ask. how models of the public policy process should incor…
Policy entrepreneurs and individuals: Influence and behavior in pandemic response
Policy entrepreneurs have traditionally been recognized for their ability to influence policymakers by framing policy problems and pairing them with preferred solutions. Does their influence extend to the public? We examine this question in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic in the United States. We analyze whether an individual's perception of a visible, national‐level policy entrepreneur, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infe…
Narrative power in the narrative policy framework
The Narrative Policy Framework lacks clear and empirical explanations of power. Yet, the study of narratives is inherently the study of power in shaping policy outputs and decisions. We develop a conceptual model positing that expressions of power ( power to , with, and over ) may be discovered in narrative constructs (e.g., narrative structure, communication forum). We suggest that the dilemma of measuring the “unobserved” in power may be addres…
Estimating the effect of policy entrepreneurship on individual vaccination behavior during the Covid‐19 pandemic
Most studies of policy entrepreneurship seek to understand how entrepreneurs influence the behavior of policy‐makers in the agenda‐setting or decision‐making phases of the policy process. Recent scholarship has sought to understand what role entrepreneurs might play in policy implementation by focusing on their ability to influence bureaucrats' discretion and behavior. However, these studies overlook the potentially critical influence of policy e…
Disaster Research and Social Network Analysis: Examples of the Scientific Understanding of Human Dynamics at the National Science Foundation
Covid-19 memorable messages as internal narratives: Stability and change over time
The United States in Chinese environmental policy narratives: Is there a trump effect
Drawing on insights from studies of environmental politics, the policy process, and the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), this study examines the Trump administration's influence on how the United States is characterized by Chinese environmental policy scholars. Using an NPF approach and policy narratives on the topic of global environmental governance, our empirical results suggest that the Trump administration has shifted Chinese environmental …
Conceptualizing Resilience
This commentary provides an overview of the idea of resilience, and acknowledges the challenges of defining and applying the idea in practice. The article summarizes a way of looking at resilience called a “resilience delta”, that takes into account both the shock done to a community by a disaster and the capacity of that community to rebound from that shock to return to its prior functionality. I show how different features of the community can …
Law, Policymaking, and the Policy Process: Closing the Gaps
Public policy scholars and public Law scholars often study the same substantive issues and have similar theoretical interests Yet students of the public policy process rarely consider the courts as policymakers in the same manner as do their public law counterpart We seek to explain this difference in approaches between the two Subfield on the question of the courts as policymakers, and we ask. how models of the public policy process should incor…
Focusing Events, Mobilization, and Agenda Setting
The policy literature often mentions the agenda-setting influence of focusing events, but few policy studies systematically examine the dynamics of these events. This article closes this gap by examining focusing events, group mobilization and agenda-setting. Using natural disasters and industrial accidents as examples, most focusing events change the dominant issues on the agenda in a policy domain, they can lead to interest group mobilization, …
Business and Political Dimensions in Disaster Management
A considerable and growing body of crisis management literature seeks to help business managers address disasters. Notwithstanding, the business literature on crisis management fails fully to understand the policy and political aspects of business disasters, and concentrates on prescriptive, managerial issues that show disregard and sometimes disdain for plural democracy. We illustrate our argument with a review of the existing crisis management …
Guns, Hollywood, and School Safety: Defining the School‐Shooting Problem Across Public Arenas
Objective. Research in agenda setting has demonstrated that dramatic news events can drive particular issues to the top of the media and governmental agendas. The objective of this study is to analyze how different aspects of an event‐driven problem compete for attention in those arenas. Methods. The method is content analysis of media coverage and congressional legislative activity following the 1999 Columbine High School shootings. Results. The…
Learning and Policy Improvement After Disaster: The Case of Aviation Security
This article considers whether policy makers in the aviation security field have learned from actual or apparent aviation security breaches in the late 1980s through 2001. The author finds that the loss of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 and of TWA Flight 800 in 1996 did lead to greater policy-making attention to a relatively narrow range of issues raised by these events. The author also finds that the September 11 terrorist attacks led to a comprehens…
The World Changed Today: Agenda-Setting and Policy Change in the Wake of the September 11 Terrorist Attacks
The September 11 terrorist attacks constitute a focusing event that have been said to have "changed everything" in America. However, the literature on focusing events, policy change, and the policy process suggests that the "windows of opportunity" opened by focusing events like the September 11 attacks do not automatically equate to policy change. This paper considers whether and to what extent the agenda and policies have changed as a result of…
Lessons of Disaster: Policy Change After Catastrophic Events (American Governance and Public Policy)
Thomas A. Birkland Chapter 1 – “This book is about the dynamics of policy change after sudden events known as focusing events” pg 1 “Blame fixing is a key feature of causal stories; these stories are important both in agenda setting and in laying the ground work for the selection if alternative policy directions” pg 4 “The entire field of crisis management is devoted to the development of non-normal procedures to respond to non-routine managerial…
Lessons of Disaster: Policy Change after Catastrophic Events
Theories and Models of Policy Change and LearningKnowledge, Learning, and Policy ChangeA Model of Event-Related Policy ChangeLearning and Lessons in This StudyMethodsThe Case StudiesConclusion 2. September 11, Learning, and Policy ChangeWhat is Homeland Security?Events and Reports: The Emergence of the Homeland Security ProblemThe September 11 Attacks as Focusing EventsSeptember 11, Policy Failure, Learning, and ChangeConclusions: Learning after …
Environmental and socioeconomic dynamics of the Indian Ocean tsunami in Penang, Malaysia
This paper addresses some of the environmental and socioeconomic dimensions of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami on Penang, Malaysia. We aim to offer wide access to unique and perishable data, while at the same time providing insight to ongoing debates about hazards, vulnerability and social capital. Our social survey examines some of the dynamics that shaped the tsunami impact, response and recovery process. While in terms of lives lost Penang may n…
Is Federalism the Reason for Policy Failure in Hurricane Katrina
Governmental responses to Hurricane Katrina are generally cited as policy failures. Media and popular analyses focus on the federal government's policy failures in hazard preparedness, response, and recovery. Meanwhile, disaster experts realize that disaster response is a shared intergovernmental responsibility. We examine the federal nature of natural disaster policy in the US to consider whether federalism, or other factors, had the greatest in…
Disaster Research and Social Network Analysis: Examples of the Scientific Understanding of Human Dynamics at the National Science Foundation
Disasters, Catastrophes, and Policy Failure in the Homeland Security Era1
The September 11 attacks triggered federal policy changes designed to influence emergency management in the United States, even though these attacks did not suggest a need for a wholesale restructuring of federal policy in emergency management. Instead, for several reasons, federal policy's emphasis on terrorism and emergency management significantly degraded the nation's ability to address natural disasters. The federal government sought to crea…
Media Framing and Policy Change After Columbine
The 1999 Columbine school shooting incident in Colorado gained far more media attention across a broader range of issues than any school violence episode before or since. One might expect that Columbine would have had an influence on public opinion, public policy, and scholarship commensurate with the attention it gained. We find that the event did contribute in a limited but interesting way to scholarship on media framing. But the effect of Colu…
Retrospectives and Prospectives on Hurricane Katrina: Five Years and Counting
New Orleans’ recovery from the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 reflects a long, complex, contentious process that still is not complete. In this article, the authors explore the key factors that have supported and hindered recovery so far. Initial conditions within the city, the web of policy demands, as well as recent changes in law and procedures for the region are explored using a new model that may be applicable to other severe dis…
Learning From Catastrophes: Strategies for Reaction and Response ‐ Edited by Howard Kunreuther and Michael Useem
Emergency Response, Doctrinal Confusion, and Federalism in the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was accompanied by intergovernmental blame casting and criticisms similar to that of Hurricane Katrina. The federal response was often viewed as slow, state officials were unsure of their role, and local officials complained that they were not adequately consulted. However, natural and oil pollution disasters have relief and regulatory regimes based on doctrines different from those governing natural disasters. Thi…
Conceptualizing Resilience
This commentary provides an overview of the idea of resilience, and acknowledges the challenges of defining and applying the idea in practice. The article summarizes a way of looking at resilience called a “resilience delta”, that takes into account both the shock done to a community by a disaster and the capacity of that community to rebound from that shock to return to its prior functionality. I show how different features of the community can …
Citizen participation in disaster recovery projects and programmes in rural communities: A comparison of the Haiti earthquake and Hurricane Katrina
This study investigates predictors of local participation in recovery projects and programmes following Hurricane Katrina in the United States in 2005 and the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. Using two sets of survey data, it examines whether disaster impacts and social capital (social trust and civic engagement) are associated with disaster recovery participation and compares predictors of such engagement in the two locations. Multivariate logistic …
During Disaster: Refining the Concept of Focusing Events to Better Explain Long-Duration Crises
Potential focusing events are sudden, relatively rare events that reveal harm, or the potential for harm, are known to policymakers and the public virtually simultaneously, and work harms on a definable geographic area or community of interest. Focusing events can provide a powerful symbol of government failure, thereby allowing previously ignored issues to advance on the government agenda. We revisit this conceptualization of focusing events wit…
Addressing the contribution of indirect potable reuse to inland freshwater salinization
Governing in a Polarized Era: Federalism and the Response of U.S. State and Federal Governments to the Covid-19 Pandemic
How does the state of American federalism explain responses to COVID-19? State-by-state variations to the COVID-19 pandemic illustrate the political dynamics of “kaleidoscopic federalism,” under which there is no single prevailing principle of federalism. In the COVID-19 pandemic, features of kaleidoscopic federalism combined with shortcomings in the public health system under the Trump administration, leading to fragmented responses to the pande…
Policy learning and change during crisis: Covid‐19 policy responses across six states
Whereas policy change is often characterized as a gradual and incremental process, effective crisis response necessitates that organizations adapt to evolving problems in near real time. Nowhere is this dynamic more evident than in the case of COVID‐19, which forced subnational governments to constantly adjust and recalibrate public health and disease mitigation measures in the face of changing patterns of viral transmission and the emergence of …
The United States in Chinese environmental policy narratives: Is there a trump effect
Drawing on insights from studies of environmental politics, the policy process, and the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), this study examines the Trump administration's influence on how the United States is characterized by Chinese environmental policy scholars. Using an NPF approach and policy narratives on the topic of global environmental governance, our empirical results suggest that the Trump administration has shifted Chinese environmental …
Policy Style and The US Policy Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Rebuttal to Lawrence D. Brown’s Fomenters of Fiasco
Through the lens of policy style that we respectfully disagree with Professor Brown’s assessment of the United States’ botched COVID-19 pandemic response as being exclusively or even primarily explained by electoral concerns. Although we agree that the electoral concerns of many actors in the response were important, reducing every aspect of the botched policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic to an electoral calculus is far too narrow. It overlo…
Policy entrepreneurs and individuals: Influence and behavior in pandemic response
Policy entrepreneurs have traditionally been recognized for their ability to influence policymakers by framing policy problems and pairing them with preferred solutions. Does their influence extend to the public? We examine this question in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic in the United States. We analyze whether an individual's perception of a visible, national‐level policy entrepreneur, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infe…
Political science (27 works) · Policy Transfer and Learning (15 works) · Disaster Management and Resilience (14 works) · Law (14 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Public relations (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Economics (10 works) · Engineering (9 works)