Focusing Events, Risk, and Regulation

Policy Shock ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 107-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Birkland ◽  
Megan K. Warnement
Keyword(s):  
Focusing Events

A multiple streams analysis of drought policies in Ceará state, Brazil

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Cavalcante ◽  
Germano Ribeiro Neto ◽  
Art Dewulf ◽  
Pieter van Oel ◽  
Francisco Souza Filho
Keyword(s):  
Policy Change ◽  
Multiple Streams ◽  
Focusing Events ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Problem Framing ◽  
Policy Ideas ◽  
Problems And Solutions ◽  
Methodological Procedures ◽  
Drought Preparedness ◽  
Drought Occurrence

<p>Interactions between society and water are complex, socio-hydrological systems are influenced by policies, which rarely are a simple linear response with the aim of providing the most efficient solution. In drought contexts, a new layer of complexity is added, considering the different uncertainties involved, related to the rainfall season, or the duration of multi-year drought events. We utilized the Multiple Streams Approach (MSA) theory to answer the following question: how do multi-year droughts function as focusing events? Focusing events may trigger greater attention to problems and solutions because they increase the likelihood that more organized interests, including some that are influential and powerful, could advocate policy change. MSA seeks to explain how policy changes. It assumes the policy change happens when three separate streams interact: (1) the problem stream, involving the emergence or recognition of a problem by society; (2) the policy stream, containing policy ideas and alternatives generated by specialists, researchers, politicians, and social actors; and (3) the politics stream, referring to the political, administrative, and legislative context favorable or unfavorable to developing certain actions to overcome the problem. The justification to apply the MSA lenses in this is study is to understand the influences of multi-year drought events as a focusing event that triggered the process of policy change considering the subnational context of Ceará state in Brazil. In this study, the following methodological procedures were used: (a) historical overview of drought occurrence and the policy responses in Ceará; (b) data processing of hydrologic records (rainfall). We found three main different policy approaches to drought impacts: reactive, proactive, and drought preparedness policies. We found in some cases that multi-year droughts served as focusing events that opened windows of opportunities, triggering policy response changes, such as, collaboration, new problem framing, and increased political attention. Our findings have implications for the socio-hydrology field, as there is still significant scope for increasing the understanding of the influences of public policies in the context of coupled-humans systems, especially in the context of drought. </p>

Community Disaster Recovery

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deserai A. Crow ◽  
Elizabeth A. Albright
Keyword(s):  
Local Governments ◽  
Disaster Response ◽  
Disaster Recovery ◽  
Community Level ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Focusing Events ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Individual Household ◽  
Extreme Flooding

Disasters can serve as focusing events that increase agenda attention related to issues of disaster response, recovery, and preparedness. Increased agenda attention can lead to policy changes and organisational learning. The degree and type of learning that occurs within a government organization after a disaster may matter to policy outcomes related to individual, household, and community-level risks and resilience. Local governments are the first line of disaster response but also bear the burden of performing long-term disaster recovery and planning for future events. Crow and Albright present the first framework for understanding if, how, and to what effect communities and local governments learn after a disaster strikes. Drawing from analyses conducted over a five-year period following extreme flooding in Colorado, USA, Community Disaster Recovery: Moving from Vulnerability to Resilience presents a framework of community-level learning after disaster and the factors that catalyse policy change towards resilience.

Designing multi-actor implementation: A mechanism-based approach

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone Busetti ◽  
Bruno Dente
Keyword(s):  
Design Strategy ◽  
Design Approach ◽  
Design Features ◽  
Focusing Events ◽  
Design Procedures ◽  
Implementation Processes ◽  
Causal Mechanisms ◽  
Policy Fields ◽  
Causal Theories ◽  
Analytical Tools

The article offers analytical tools for designing multi-actor implementation processes. It does so by proposing a design approach centred on causal mechanisms. Such design strategy requires designers to focus primarily on causal theories explaining why implementers commit overtime to implementing policies. The central proposal is that design procedures should be reversed, i.e. start by reasoning on the causal mechanisms explaining implementers’ behaviour and then go looking for design features. Several advantages of this approach related to designing, reforming, or transferring successful practices are discussed throughout the article. Finally, the article provides six extended examples of such mechanisms in different policy fields: actor’s certification, blame avoidance, earning brownie points, repeated interactions, focusing events and attribution of opportunity or threat.

High profile rape trials and policy advocacy

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-61
Author(s):  
Kristine Coulter ◽  
David S. Meyer
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Secondary Treatment ◽  
Policy Advocacy ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Focusing Events ◽  
Problem Construction ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Rape Trials ◽  
Events Data

AbstractActivists try to use high profile trials to advance their political agendas, and we want to understand why they occasionally succeed in promoting policy reforms. We begin by reviewing literature on agenda setting and social problem construction, conceptualising high profile trials as “focusing events” that offer activists a chance to advance their definitions and remedies for particular social problems. We next outline the feminist movement against sexual violence as a useful example of activists trying to use trials for their own political purposes. Using events data from theNew York Timesand the secondary treatment of 13 high profile trials from 1960 to 1997, we examine factors that help or hinder activists’ efforts to use a trial to forward their cause. We see that both the nature of the trial and the political context surrounding it affect the likelihood that a movement gains control of its meaning and secures policy reform.

Focusing Events, Mobilization, and Agenda Setting

1998 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
THOMAS A. BIRKLAND
Keyword(s):  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Focusing Events

Learning in Organizations and Public Policy

2001 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEORGE J. BUSENBERG
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Organizational Learning ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
Focusing Events ◽  
New Information ◽  
Shape Learning ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Over Time

This study builds a conceptual framework to guide empirical studies of learning in public policy. Learning in public policy is defined here as a process in which individuals apply new information and ideas to policy decisions. This topic is examined by adapting relevant concepts from studies of organizational learning to the context of public policy. Recent work in the organizational learning literature focuses on institutional structures, procedures, and customs (learning arrangements) that act to promote individual learning. Further work in the policy literature suggests that focusing events (incidents that focus public and political attention on a policy issue) can also shape learning in public policy. Combining insights from these two literatures, this study proposes that both learning arrangements and focusing events can play observable roles in shaping policy change over time. These concepts are developed and examined in the context of hazardous systems.

scholarly journals Upsetting the agenda: the clout of external focusing events in the European Council

2015 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petya Alexandrova
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
European Council ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Focusing Events ◽  
Combining Data

AbstractFocusing events are sudden, striking large-scale occurrences that attract political attention. However, not all potential focusing events appear on the agenda. Combining data from multiple sources, this study conducts an analysis of the determinants of prioritisation of external focusing events in the European Council over a period longer than two decades. The results demonstrate that decisions regarding the placement of crises on the agenda are underscored by exogenous (humanitarian) and endogenous (geopolitical interest) considerations. Those events with a higher likelihood of agenda access include manmade incidents (versus natural disasters), events with larger death tolls and crises in the neighbourhood. Stronger competition between potential focusing events across time and space reduces the chances of access. The level of attention each event receives depends on purely strategic interests. Focusing events in neighbouring countries gain a higher portion of attention, as do occurrences in states having a larger trade exchange with the European Union.

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