Dr. Ki Eun Kang, Institute for Science, Technology and Public Policy (ISTPP) Postdoctoral Research Associate, and Dr. Ann Bowman, Professor and ISTPP Fellow, presented their paper, “Resilient Cities: Explaining Policy Adoption,” at the 75th Annual Conference of the Western Political Science Association (WPSA) in Portland, OR on March 11, 2022. The paper is coauthored with Dr. Sierra Woodruff and Dr. Bryce Hannibal, ISTPP Fellows.
Their research seeks to determine which city characteristics influence the adoption of resilience policies. To probe this question, they used an original data set of policy adoptions in the 101 largest U.S. cities. They developed and tested models that included potential drivers of adoption such as problem severity, political ideology, city capacity, local institutions, and membership networks. Their analysis showed that cities’ enactment of resilience policies is largely a matter of capacity, ideology, and diffusion. Larger, wealthier, and liberal cities are more likely to adopt resilience policies. Cities that are members of city networks also adopt more policies, but not all networks significantly influence policy adoption suggesting that network goals and connections are important.
