Professor Daniel Henstra publishes new article in Global Environmental Change
Climate
change
poses
a
significant
risk
for
communities,
and
local
governments
around
the
world
have
begun
responding
by
developing
climate
adaptation
policies.
Scholarship
on
local
adaptation
policy
has
proliferated
in
recent
years,
but
insufficient
attention
has
been
paid
to
operationalization
of
the
unit
of
analysis,
and
methods
employed
are
typically
inadequate
to
draw
inferences
about
variation
across
cases.
This
article
seeks
to
contribute
to
the
conceptual
and
methodological
foundations
of
a
research
agenda
for
comparative
analysis
of
local
adaptation
policies
and
policy-making.
Synthesizing
insights
from
policy
studies
literature
and
existing
adaptation
research,
the
article
identifies
and
operationalizes
two
aspects
of
public
policy—policy
content
and
policy
process—which
are
salient
objects
of
comparative
analysis
that
typically
vary
from
one
community
to
another.
The
article
also
addresses
research
design,
outlining
a
comparative
case
study
methodology
that
incorporates
various
qualitative
analytical
techniques
as
the
vehicle
to
examine
these
policy
elements
in
empirical
settings.