Do Catastrophes Teach Policy Makers?

Richard T. Sylves Bruce Lindsay University of Delaware

Do Catastrophes Teach Policy Makers?

Richard T. Sylves is a professor of political science and a senior policy fellow at the University of Delaware. He was an appointed member of the National Academy of Science, Disasters Roundtable in 2002–2005. He has published three books, and a fourth, Disaster Politics and Policy, is forthcoming from CQ Press. He researches disaster policy. E-mail: [email protected] Bruce Lindsay is a doctoral student in the University of Delaware’s Energy and Environmental Policy program, concentrating on disaster policy. He earned a master’s degree in public administration from the Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver. E-mail: [email protected]

Thomas A. Birkland, Lessons of Disaster: Policy Change after Catastrophic Events (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2007). 216 pp. $26.95 (paper), ISBN: 9781589011212.

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he book under review is a follow-up to Thomas Birkland’s well-received After Disasters: Agenda Setting, Public Policy, and Focusing Events of 1997, also published by Georgetown University Press. Lessons extends well beyond After Disasters, and it is a significant contribution to the study of disaster politics and policy. Birkland recently joined the School of Public and International Affairs at North Carolina State University, where he is the William Kretzer Distinguished Professor in the Department of Public Administration. Lessons was impelled by, and covers, the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The book was apparently far into the publication process when Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005. Nonetheless, Birkland was able to supply readers with many insights about policy changes in the wake of the Katrina catastrophe. Birkland has a talent for lucidly writing for scholars while simultaneously conveying his messages clearly to

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students and to people new to the field. Lessons is useful for those teaching and studying the policy process and for those interested in how crises, major disasters, and catastrophes shape disaster policy. The work has modest value for emergency managers and other practitioners. The 216-page study introduces a model of “eventrelated” policy change. Birkland acknowledges the key contributions of other theorists and theories in this subject field. He builds his study on some of the policy theoretic works of John Kingdon (1995) and Paul A. Sabatier and Hank C. Jenkins-Smith (1993). He ably explains how disaster is very much a socially constructed phenomenon and simultaneously something manifesting indisputable physicality. He correctly notes as well that “federal disaster relief policy is designed to routinize responses to predictable types of disasters” (6). On this, he stands with authors such as James F. Miskel (2006), Donald F. Kettl (2007), David A. McEntire (2007), and others. Lessons seeks to advance our knowledge of disaster policy by examining the context in which cataclysmic events shape policy. The book maintains that disaster

policy change is often a result of disaster policy failures. These failures prompt three types of learning: instrumental, political, and social (16). Instrumental policy learning involves analyzing and evaluating existing policies to make design changes and adjustments to improve policy performance. Social policy learning occurs when recognition of the social construction of a policy or program takes place. According to Lessons, if social policy learning is applied successfully, the result is a better understanding of the causal theory that is at the heart of the public problem. Finally, political learning takes place when advocates and opponents of a policy change integrate new information that has entered the political system. They use it to refashion their political and rhetorical strategies and tactics. Birkland’s thematic argument is that disaster focusing events tend to return attention to ideas in place before the event. Birkland maintains that policy makers and thinkers rarely produce novel or extraordinary solutions to address future disasters immediately after major disasters and catastrophes. Instead, these focusing events direct attention to unresolved existing and persistent problems, and this, in turn, creates opportunities for policy change. Instrumental, political, and social learning are possible when the proximate causes of policy failure are addressed by policy makers. Case chapters on 9/11 and homeland security, aviation security, and earthquakes and hurricanes are at the core of Lessons. The book makes careful distinctions among crises, disasters, and catastrophes. “Crises,” such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill incident (1989) and the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident (1979), are induced by actions or inactions of an organization (3) and depend on the interpretations of relevant actors. “Disasters” result from “induced natural phenomena or external human action” to which government or organizations can simply respond (e.g., the September 11 attacks and Hurricane Andrew in 1992). Embedded in these events, whether caused by nature or by human actions, are multiorganizational failures. “Catastrophes,” Birkland tells us, “are more profound than disasters because they affect much broader areas, render local and neighboring governments unable to respond because they too are affected, and therefore require considerable assistance from regional and national governments or from international or nongovernmental relief organizations” (4). He classifies the South Asia tsunami and Hurricane Katrina as catastrophes. Birkland’s work shines when it comes to acknowledging that disasters envelop or overlap other policy domains. Most emergency management scholars advocate an all-hazards conceptualization of disaster policy. The preparedness and response needed to

address one hazard overlaps or is so similar to that needed for other hazards that it is best to prepare and train for hazard response generically and with only minimal differentiation from one disaster hazard to the next. “All-hazards” is now doctrine in U.S. emergency management. Birkland has reminded us, through this and several of his other works, that different types of disasters encompass different sets of political interests. Often the interests associated with one type of event, earthquake preparedness and response, for example, work competitively with the interests associated with another type of event, such as hurricane preparedness and response. All-hazards emergency management is not always politically feasible. Lessons draws heavily on the relationship between media coverage of focusing events and disaster policy initiatives. The book develops a conceptual and explanatory framework that demonstrates the link between media attention and public problems. The linkage of media coverage and disaster policy also sheds light on proposed solutions that facilitate learning. Birkland contends that the news media play a major role in policy making, unlike Kingdon (1995), who thinks the media play only a limited role. Lessons employs a content analysis of two major sources: the New York Times and congressional hearings. From this, Birkland draws conclusions about the frequency and percentage of specific key words. Had Lessons drawn from more media sources, its findings would have greater validity. This, however, is only a minor flaw. Lessons does a superb job analyzing congressional testimony and the language of legislation. As Birkland notes, congressional hearings are consistently well documented and provide a good record of the groups that are the most active in various policy domains. Lessons avers that research on policy implementation provides insights into why lessons are learned but seldom made into law and policy. Late in the tract, Lessons introduces the concept of “direct learning.” This is defined as “evidence that the state has changed its policy on the basis of what it learned from a disaster” (130). Birkland might have introduced this concept earlier in the book, where it could have been compared and contrasted with his other theories of learning. Birkland accurately observes that policy makers tend to disregard disaster mitigation and prevention after catastrophes, choosing instead to concentrate on matters of disaster recovery. He thinks this is unfortunate, as the rebuilding process is the most opportune time to introduce mitigating measures, yet these practices often receive very little attention during this period. Policy makers find it more politically rewarding to satisfy disaster victim needs first. Policy makers find the controversial demands of reducing societal disaster vulnerability to future catastrophes hard work, Book Reviews

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likely to alienate key political vested interests, and politically and electorally risky. Lessons argues persuasively that the shift in policy focus from natural disasters to terrorism and the rise of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which absorbed and subsumed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), has significantly weakened the latter agency’s ability to address disasters. Birkland is not alone in making such claims, echoing the concerns of Donald Kettl (2007), Kathleen Tierney (2005), and George Haddow and Jane Bullock (2006) that the transformation has severely undermined U.S. capacity to respond to its own natural disasters. Birkland’s assertion may still be valid despite the establishment of a so-called new FEMA within the Department of Homeland Security in 2007. Readers interested in disaster policy and emergency management will find Lessons instructive and illuminating. The case studies are contextually rich and demonstrate the relationship between focusing events and disaster policies quite deftly. Moreover, readers will find Birkland’s thorough knowledge of the policy process impressive. Lessons of Catastrophe is a worthwhile resource

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for grasping how concepts of learning may help explain the “fits and starts” of U.S. disaster policy making.

References Haddow, George D., and Jane A. Bullock. 2006. Introduction to Emergency Management. 2nd ed. Boston: Elsevier/Butterworth-Heinemann. Kettl, Donald F. 2007. System under Stress: Homeland Security and American Politics. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: CQ Press. Kingdon, John W. 1995. Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies. 2nd ed. New York: Longman. McEntire, David A. 2007. Disaster Response and Recovery: Strategies and Tactics for Resilience. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Miskel, James F. 2006. Disaster Response and Homeland Security: What Works, What Doesn’t. Westport, CT: Praeger Security International. Tierney, Kathleen J. 2005. Recent Developments in U.S. Homeland Security Policies and Their Implications for the Management of Extreme Events. Boulder, CO: Natural Hazards Research and Applications Center, Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado at Boulder.