Papers by Thomas Birkland
Routledge eBooks, Feb 17, 2015
Choice Reviews Online, 2001
Environmental Management, 1994
We develop an understanding of local governmental efforts to address earthquake risks. Our data f... more We develop an understanding of local governmental efforts to address earthquake risks. Our data for a sample of California and Washington cities' risk-reduction efforts sort into two different clusters of leading jurisdictions as contrasted with a cluster of lagging jurisdictions. We explain differences among the three categories of cities in terms of different political-economic factors. Local governmental willingness and ability to undertake risk-reduction programs have more to do with local political demands and community resources than with objective risk or previous earthquake experience. State mandates have a selective impact on local risk-reduction efforts. The principal policy lessons concern the need to address gaps in local risk-reduction efforts through more careful targeting of federal and state earthquake programs and by including stronger teeth within state mandates.
Research Square (Research Square), Apr 12, 2023
Review of Policy Research, Aug 16, 2022
The increasingly long ice-free season in the Arctic, a consequence of climate change, coupled wit... more The increasingly long ice-free season in the Arctic, a consequence of climate change, coupled with the increased maritime activity that is enabled by ice-free seasons, is posing significant challenges for emergency preparedness in Arctic Alaska. These challenges are compounded by the complex institutional and governmental arrangements that characterize the management of resources and emergency response in Alaska. Governance in Alaska is far more challenging than one would expect in a state of about 750,000 people. Stakeholders in this field include the federal and state governments, local governments that differ in some respects from the form of local government in other states, Alaska Native corporations at the regional and village level, as well as other private interests. Planning for a maritime response is particularly challenging since the region has no deep-water ports, and the largest community in the Arctic Alaska, Utqiaġvik (formerly Barrow) is not much larger than 4,000 people. The combination of remoteness, the lack of substantial emergency preparedness and support infrastructure, and the sparse population of the Arctic Alaska makes planning for emergencies challenging. This more complete assessment of the governance structure of emergency management incidents, at a time where melting sea ice is leading to much more maritime traffic and thus increased risk of incidents, and as climate change is reducing community resilience to natural phenomena overall, may allow for actions that better meet the needs of the community or communities affected.
Research Square (Research Square), Apr 12, 2023
PNAS Nexus
In the face of vaccine hesitancy, public health officials are seeking more effective risk communi... more In the face of vaccine hesitancy, public health officials are seeking more effective risk communication approaches to increase vaccination rates. We test the influence of visual policy narratives on COVID-19 vaccination behavior through a panel survey experiment conducted in early 2021 (n = 3,900) and then 8 weeks later (n = 2,268). We examine the effects of three visual policy narrative messages that test the narrative mechanism of character selection (yourself, your circle, and your community) and a nonnarrative control on COVID-19 vaccine behavior. Visual risk messages that use narratives positively influence COVID-19 vaccination through serial mediation of affective response to the messages and motivation to get the COVID-19 vaccination. Additionally, character selection matters, as messages focusing on protecting others (i.e. your circle and your community) perform stronger than those of yourself. Political ideology moderated some of the effects, with conservative respondents i...
Nature Sustainability
In Fig. 5b of this Article, the pie chart attributed 14.7% to wastewater treatment. After correct... more In Fig. 5b of this Article, the pie chart attributed 14.7% to wastewater treatment. After correcting an error in the original calculations, this estimate has been revised to 4.2%. In addition, in the main text '46.5%' should have been '36%' in the sentence starting "On the basis of data provided by the utility…", and '53.5%' should have been '64%' in the sentence starting "The source of the remaining…". The original Article has been corrected online.
Toxicology and Industrial Health, 2020
In Spring/Summer 2020, most individuals living in the United States experienced several months of... more In Spring/Summer 2020, most individuals living in the United States experienced several months of social distancing and stay-at-home orders because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Clinicians, restaurant cooks, cashiers, transit operators, and other essential workers (EWs), however, continued to work outside the home during this time in order to keep others alive and maintain a functioning society. In the United States, EWs are often low-income persons of color who are more likely to face socioeconomic vulnerabilities, systemic racism, and health inequities. To assess the various impacts of COVID-19 on EWs, an online survey was distributed to a representative sample of individuals residing in six states during May/June 2020. The sample included 990 individuals who identified as EWs and 736 nonessential workers (NWs). We assessed differences between EW and NW respondents according to three categories related to health equity and social determinants of health: (1) demographics ...
Environmental Science & Technology
Freshwater salinity is rising across many regions of the United States as well as globally, a phe... more Freshwater salinity is rising across many regions of the United States as well as globally, a phenomenon called the freshwater salinization syndrome (FSS). The FSS mobilizes organic carbon, nutrients, heavy metals, and other contaminants sequestered in soils and freshwater sediments, alters the structures and functions of soils, streams, and riparian ecosystems, threatens drinking water supplies, and undermines progress toward many of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. There is an urgent need to leverage the current understanding of salinization's causes and consequences�in partnership with engineers, social scientists, policymakers, and other stakeholders�into locally tailored approaches for balancing our nation's salt budget. In this feature, we propose that the FSS can be understood as a common pool resource problem and explore Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom's social-ecological systems framework as an approach for identifying the conditions under which local actors may work collectively to manage the FSS in the absence of top-down regulatory controls. We adopt as a case study rising sodium concentrations in the Occoquan Reservoir, a critical water supply for up to one million residents in Northern Virginia (USA), to illustrate emerging impacts, underlying causes, possible solutions, and critical research needs.
Politics and Governance, 2016
This commentary provides an overview of the idea of resilience, and acknowledges the challenges o... more 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 create resilience, and consider how the developed and developing world addresses resilience. I also consider the role of focusing events in gaining attention to events and promoting change. I note that, while focusing events are considered by many in the disaster studies field to be major drivers of policy change in the United States disaster policy, most disasters have little effect on the overall doctrine of shared responsibilities between the national and subnational governments.
In the face of increasing vaccine hesitancy, public health officials at multiple levels of govern... more In the face of increasing vaccine hesitancy, public health officials at multiple levels of government are fervently working to identify effective communication strategies to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake. This study is an experiment designed to test the effect of narrative and non-narrative messages about COVID-19 risks and vaccine benefits on intention to get the COVID-19 vaccine (others and self).
The Routledge Handbook of Urban Disaster Resilience, 2019
International Review of Public Policy, 2021
Potential focusing events are sudden, relatively rare events that reveal harm, or the potential f... more 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 within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We show that, while the current COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound effect on both the media and government agendas, it lacks many of the elements used to differentiate focusing events from other theoretical constructs used to describe public problems. Specifically, our findings suggest that focusing event theory is ill equipped to describe slow-onset, long-duration disasters such as COVID-19. We develop a new typology for characterizing these types of events, which accounts for both the duration of the event as well as the magnitude or scale of the event's impact.
Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 2021
How does the state of American federalism explain responses to COVID-19? State-by-state variation... more 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 pandemic among the states. Federalism alone does not explain the shortcomings of the United States’ response to the pandemic. Rather, the fragmented response was driven by state partisanship, which shaped state public health interventions and resulted in differences in public health outcomes. This has sobering implications for American federalism because state-level partisan differences yield different and unequal responses to the pandemic.
Nature Sustainability, 2021
Inland freshwater salinity is rising worldwide, a phenomenon called the freshwater salinization 3... more Inland freshwater salinity is rising worldwide, a phenomenon called the freshwater salinization 32 syndrome (FSS). We investigate a potential conflict between managing the FSS and indirect potable reuse, the practice of augmenting water supplies through the addition of reclaimed wastewater to surface waters and groundwaters. From time-series data collected over 25 years, we quantify the contributions of three salinity sources-a wastewater reclamation facility and two rapidly urbanizing watersheds-to the rising concentration of sodium (a major ion associated with the FSS) in a regionally important drinking water reservoir in the Mid-Atlantic United States. Sodium mass loading to the reservoir is primarily from watershed runoff during wet weather and reclaimed wastewater during dry weather. Across all timescales evaluated, sodium concentration in the reclaimed wastewater is higher than in outflow from the two watersheds. Sodium in reclaimed wastewater originates from chemicals added during wastewater treatment, industrial and commercial discharges, human excretion, and down-drain disposal of drinking water and sodium-rich household products. Thus, numerous opportunities exist to reduce the contribution of indirect potable reuse to sodium pollution at this site, and the FSS more generally. These efforts will require deliberative engagement with a diverse community of watershed stakeholders and careful consideration of the local political, social, and environmental context.
Review of Policy Research, 2009
The September 11 attacks triggered federal policy changes designed to influence emergency managem... more 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 create a top-down, command and control model of emergency management that never fully accounted for, positively or normatively, the way local emergency management works in practice. The Obama administration will have to address the questions raised by the reorganization of federal emergency management responsibilities. While the context in which these changes have occurred is unique to the U.S. federal system, there are interesting implications for emergency management in nonfederal systems.
Social Science Quarterly, 2004
Objective. Research in agenda setting has demonstrated that dramatic news events can drive partic... more 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 results show that while both agendas converged on the gun-control aspect of the problem, they substantially diverged on other understandings of what kind of problem the Columbine shooting represented and how to address it. Conclusions. We conclude that the differing institutional structure and incentives of the news media and Congress can create or inhibit interinstitutional positive feedback in the problem-defining process. Agenda divergences are amplified when prominent politicians cue the media to follow particular story lines that depart from actual legislative activity.
Finally, we acknowledge the contribution of the "subjects" of our research who patiently submitte... more Finally, we acknowledge the contribution of the "subjects" of our research who patiently submitted to interviews in which they had to relive their Katrina experiences with painful detail. And they also had to locate data from these experiences. Whether the person was a homeowner, a non-profit organization director, a community or public organization manager responsible for some element of recovery-such as General Downer of the Louisiana Army National Guard (who participated in the public presentation of these findings on Capitol Hill on April 20, 2010), their contribution is invaluable. We could not have done the project without them and at their expense.
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Papers by Thomas Birkland