At a global level, climate change is expected to result in more frequent and higher-intensity weather events, with impacts ranging from inconvenient to catastrophic. The potential for disasters to act as “focusing events” for policy change, including adaptation to climate change risk, is well known. Moreover, local action is an important element of climate change adaptation and related risk management efforts. As such, there is a good reason to expect local communities to mobilize in response to disaster events, both with immediate response and recovery-focused activities, as well as longer-term preparedness and adaptation-focused public policy changes. However, scholars also note that the experience of disaster does not always yield policy change; indeed, disasters can also result in policy inertia and failure, perhaps as often or more often than major policy change. This study poses two key research questions. First, we ask to what degree policy change occurs in communities impacted by an extreme weather event. Second, we seek to understand the conditions that lead to adaptation-oriented policy adoption in response to an extreme weather event. Our results suggest two main recipes for future-oriented policy adoption in the wake of an extreme weather event. For both recipes, a high-impact event is a necessary condition for future-oriented policy adoption. In the first recipe for change, policy adoption occurs in Democratic communities with highly focused media attention. The second, less expected recipe for change involves Republican communities that have experienced other uncommon weather events in the recent past. We use a comparative case approach with 15 cases and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis methods. Our approach adds to the existing literature on policy change and local adaptation by selecting a mid-N range of cases where extreme weather events have the potential to act as focusing events, thereby sidestepping selection on the dependent variable. Our approach also takes advantage of a novel method for measuring attention, the latent Dirichlet allocation approach. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s11077-020-09401-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

中文翻译：

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应对极端天气事件的地方适应政策

在全球范围内，气候变化预计将导致更频繁和更高强度的天气事件，其影响从不便到灾难性不等。众所周知，灾害有可能成为政策变化的“焦点事件”，包括适应气候变化风险。此外，地方行动是气候变化适应和相关风险管理工作的重要组成部分。因此，有充分的理由期望当地社区动员起来应对灾害事件，包括立即响应和以恢复为重点的活动，以及以长期备灾和适应为重点的公共政策变化。然而，学者们也注意到，灾难的经历并不总是产生政策变化；事实上，灾难也会导致政策惯性和失败，可能与重大政策变化一样频繁或更频繁​​。这项研究提出了两个关键的研究问题。首先，我们询问受极端天气事件影响的社区的政策变化程度。其次，我们寻求了解导致采取以适应为导向的政策以应对极端天气事件的条件。我们的研究结果提出了在极端天气事件发生后采用面向未来的政策的两个主要方法。对于这两种方法，高影响事件是采用面向未来的政策的必要条件。在变革的第一个秘诀中，政策采用发生在高度集中媒体关注的民主社区。第二个不太出人意料的变革秘诀涉及最近经历过其他不寻常天气事件的共和党社区。我们使用15个案例的比较案例方法和模糊集定性比较分析方法。我们的方法通过选择极端天气事件有可能充当焦点事件的中等 N 范围的案例，从而回避对因变量的选择，从而增加了有关政策变化和当地适应的现有文献。我们的方法还利用了一种测量注意力的新方法，即潜在狄利克雷分配方法。电子补充材料 本文的在线版本 (10.1007/s11077-020-09401-3) 包含补充材料，可供授权用户使用。我们的方法通过选择极端天气事件有可能充当焦点事件的中等 N 范围的案例，从而回避对因变量的选择，从而增加了有关政策变化和当地适应的现有文献。我们的方法还利用了一种测量注意力的新方法，即潜在狄利克雷分配方法。电子补充材料 本文的在线版本 (10.1007/s11077-020-09401-3) 包含补充材料，可供授权用户使用。我们的方法通过选择极端天气事件有可能充当焦点事件的中等 N 范围的案例，从而回避对因变量的选择，从而增加了有关政策变化和当地适应的现有文献。我们的方法还利用了一种测量注意力的新方法，即潜在狄利克雷分配方法。电子补充材料 本文的在线版本 (10.1007/s11077-020-09401-3) 包含补充材料，可供授权用户使用。