Lessons of Disaster: Policy Change after Catastrophic Events

Extract

Lessons of Disaster: Policy Change after Catastrophic Events. By Thomas A. Birkland. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2006. 240p. $44.95 cloth, $26.95 paper.

Lessons of Disaster is a natural follow-up to the author's previous book, After Disaster (1997), which examined the extent to which disasters and accidents influence policy agendas within relevant domains. Lessons of Disaster is built on this previous work but focuses specifically on whether or not disasters, as focusing events, induce policy learning. The author differentiates between simple policy change and actual policy learning by defining learning as a process by which policy actors incorporate new information and insights revealed by a disaster and purposefully apply it to the design of more appropriate or effective policies.