International Public Management Journal

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A Review of: Lessons of Disaster: Policy Change

After Catastrophic Events by Thomas A. Birkland

Amy K. Donahue

To cite this article: Amy K. Donahue (2010) A Review of: Lessons of Disaster: Policy Change
After Catastrophic Events by Thomas A. Birkland, International Public Management Journal, 13:1,
100-103, DOI: 10.1080/10967490903547399

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10967490903547399

Published online: 02 Mar 2010.

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 International
Public
Management
Journal

BOOK REVIEW
LESSONS OF DISASTER: POLICY CHANGE AFTER
CATASTROPHIC EVENTS BY THOMAS A. BIRKLAND

AMY K. DONAHUE
Downloaded by [University of Ghana] at 07:55 04 December 2017

UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT

Lessons of Disaster: Policy Change After Catastrophic Events. Thomas A. Birkland.

Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2007, 216 pages. ISBN: 978-1-
58901-121-2

Disasters are chaotic events that disrupt the normal routines of society. The new
circumstances created by disasters alter peoples perceptions, often prompting indivi-
duals and political actors to question policy priorities and to scrutinize the effective-
ness of public management systems. Disasters can illuminate gaps and weaknesses in
the existing policy regime and crystallize problems that demand solutions. In this
environment, public officials often feel motivated to make changes that will improve
outcomes the next time disaster strikes. To do so requires individuals and public insti-
tutions alike to be able to identify, understand, and ultimately learn the lessons dis-
asters reveal. A profound challenge is that the infrequency with which disasters
occur makes it hard for policymakers to specify problems correctly, and to configure
and confirm the utility of new policy approaches. Thus, while governments readily
identify the urgent lessons disaster experiences teach, learning is much harder to
achieveand beyond that, permanent policy change does not automatically result.
Thomas Birkland offers an analysis of the challenge of policymaking in the wake
of disasters in his second book on this topic. Birklands first book, After Disaster:
Agenda Setting, Public Policy, and Focusing Events, asked what effects natural disas-
ters have on the problems governments choose to focus on solving. He concluded
that disasters increase the attention particular policy problems get, but that the
agenda that emerges depends on the nature of the political process that operates
in a given hazard domain. Lessons of Disaster extends his assessment of policymak-
ing to examine institutional learning and policy change. The books goal is to deter-
mine whether, how, and how quickly the desire to make substantial changes to
public policyand to improve societys preparedness for future eventsmay be

International Public Management Journal, 13(1), pages 100103 Copyright # 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
DOI: 10.1080/10967490903547399 ISSN: 1096-7494 print /1559-3169 online
 BOOK REVIEW 101

fulfilled. Ultimately, Birkland concludes that major disasters can induce major
change by serving as catalysts that allow existing ideas to gain support and be trans-
lated into new policy. This book therefore provides useful empirical confirmation of
some of the core tenets of the organizational change literature. It also stands as one
of only a few sets of systematic case analyses in the area of disaster response that is
carefully grounded in theory; provides practical, detailed, defensible insights; and
offers a clear agenda for future empirical research.
The book employs a series of three case studies, analysis of which is informed by
theories of learning and change. Each case concerns a distinct type of disaster and
thus offers a particular perspective on the motivation for and nature of change.
The cases are the September 11th attacks, natural disasters (specifically earthquakes
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and hurricanes), and aviation security failures. For each, Birkland determines
whether policy change, and thus learning, has occurred on the basis of a review of
legislative and regulatory activity. His analytic approach and data sources vary
across the cases, as they are distinct in terms of the policy communities engaged
and the policy exigencies they raise. In general, though, his data are derived from
witness testimony at congressional legislative and oversight hearings, news reports,
legislation itself, and review of various other relevant policy documents. He coded
the testimony to determine the importance of focusing events. He relied on news
coverage of these events in the New York Times to characterize the public agenda.
Through his cases analyses Birkland offers many interesting observations that
probe the complexities of public policymaking. Most focus on his primary research
questions about learning and change as reflected in legislation, but he also comments
insightfully about related factors, such as technological influences, organizational
design impacts, and political incentives. Among the books major findings are three
that bear particular mention.
First, Birkland finds that learning allows policymakers to understand better the
causal relationships that generate policy problems, as well as the meaning of these
causes, and therefore allows them to formulate effective responses. This kind of
learning and change tends to operate when events occur in a context of existing ideas
that are already somewhat mature and therefore lend themselves to adaptation as
new policy devices. This view is very consistent with theories of change that argue
that change arises from a confluence of existing innovations and galvanizing events
(see, for example, Kanter 1983).
Second, Birkland shows that whereas particular events may lead to learning in
some domains, individual natural disaster events do not precipitate change in natural
hazards policy. Interestingly, Birkland argues that in this domain, experience accu-
mulates and ultimately influences learning and change. History shows that this can
be an achingly long-term proposition, as we seem to observe the same lessons disas-
ter after disaster, with little evidence of meaningful change in the wake of any parti-
cular event. Birkland finds that over many years policymakers eventually understand
what they can do to mitigate hazards and make these changes. The relationship
between learning and change in this policy subsystem is further attenuated by the
fact that the public and politicians clearly prefer to allocate resources to relief after
a natural disaster than to mitigation.
 102 International Public Management Journal Vol. 13, No. 1, 2010

Third, the book also offers valuable insight into the puzzle of institutional learn-
ing, especially whether governments do actually grow in their knowledge and
improve their behavior, or whether they simply identify lessons but never change
in response. Birkland points out that widely held pessimism about whether govern-
ments learn is worsened by cases such as Hurricane Katrina, where government per-
formance appears to have deteriorated as a result of unlearning. This observation
alludes to the fact that there is much about the process and substance of learning
post-disaster that is not yet well understood. Certainly, change and learning are clo-
sely associated. As Birkland suggests (see, for example, his Table 1.2), change is an
indicator of learning. He uses legislative action as evidence of policy change and an
indication of learning, under the assumption that legislation is tangible evidence of
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learning outcomes. At the same time, learning might be better characterized not
simply as changed behavior, but as improved activity. From this perspective, change
that is not for the good would not indicate learninga notion Birkland addresses
when he considers the possibility of change without learning after 9=11 and the
history of failures to apply lessons with regard to aviation security breaches.
Moreover, political pressures may prompt changes that serve political ends but that
do not constitute effective operational improvementand may, in fact, do more
harm than good by shifting activity away from risk-based priorities or by imposing
costly administrative or oversight requirements. Beyond this, after many large disas-
ters, public frustrations with poor performance often relate to very tactical problems.
Legislative tools are rarely capable of penetrating operational procedures deeply
enough to solve these sorts of problems. Thus, it is possible that learning occurs
at some policymaking levels and not at others. Birklands valuable work could be
extended in productive ways through future examination of the degree and congru-
ence of learning at multiple governance and operational levels.
In sum, Birklands exploration makes important progress toward revealing some
of the core challenges of learning and change. It doesnt fully disentangle the subtle
relationship between learning and change in the context of politics and policymaking
at all levels of government, and across diverse policy domains. This is not a shortfall,
but speaks to the complexity of these concepts as targets for sound empirical study.
Birklands insights are derived from a careful examination of a few important case
examples, and give real opportunity for traction in further unpacking social, policy,
and operational (what Birkland calls instrumental) learning in future research.
Thus, the books most important contribution is perhaps the set of propositions
articulated in its first chapter, which synthesizes relevant theories of learning and
change, and sets them in the context of disasters. These propositions are revisited
in the last chapter, where conclusions are distilled that themselves serve as fertile
ground for specifying testable hypotheses. The complexity and variety of disasters,
coupled with the multi-dimensional nature of learning and change processes, offer
many opportunities to pursue these propositions to a deeper level than can be
achieved in a single book. Thus, the book offers a conceptual framework and
research agenda coupled with findings that disclose the rich analytic opportunities
that lie ahead for scholars of disaster management. As a result, scholars will find this
book a useful basis for designing their own research agendas.
 BOOK REVIEW 103

Because of its richness, other audiences will also benefit from this book. Practi-
tioners who struggle daily under public scrutiny and pressure to improve can better
understand how the broader policymaking process contends with disasters. Informed
by insights crystallized here, they can both temper their expectations and better tar-
get their own activities if they hope to realize productive change. Instructors will find
this a useful text in courses about homeland security policy and management because
of the substantive observations offered about particular types of disasters, but also in
courses about the policymaking process more generally. The book reveals how stark
notions of policymaking that imply a logical progression from agenda-setting to pol-
icy formulation to implementation are complicated in reality by nuanced interactions
between public perception of focusing events, the wide array of interests at stake, and
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political priorities. The book also shows that even when focusing events seem to
make policy problems clear, the causal relationships that underlie these problems
are hard to discern. As a result, social learning is hard to predict or direct, and poli-
cies and problems may not coalesce coherently. In short, this book can help instruc-
tors help their students understand why the pace of policy change tends to be so
slow, as well as why change occurs when it does.

REFERENCE
Kanter, R. M. 1983. The Change Masters. New York: Simon and Schuster.