Abstract
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.