Public Policy Decisions and Argument Structures for Sea Level Rise Policies

• In Event: Disaster Politics and Policies in the Americas: New Research

Abstract

Public meetings are longstanding institutional cornerstones of American local governments’ policy decision making processes. The meetings are forums for public participants to present arguments directly to policymakers to influence policy decisions. Policymakers (usually elected public officials) also must present arguments in front of the public participants to legitimize their decisions. Although scholarly debates have focused on whether public meetings are forums for meaningful deliberation and participation, extant literature has paid little attention to how the elected officials make their decisions in public meetings. In our paper, we examine the form and content of arguments presented on sea level rise in public meetings. In regard to form, participants use various argumentation tactics to advance their own interests and undercut the opposition (Ali & Ganapati, 2019). With respect to content, participants assume certain narrative logics (presumed connections or relationships that drive an argument forward) in their effort to influence policy decisions (Quick, 2018). Identifying these argument structures is fundamental for advancing policy science on why policy decisions result in the form they do and how to make better decisions. Our focus is on sea level rise as it is a critical and insidious global problem. It not only affects natural ecosystems, threatens shoreline developments and pushes storm surge further inland; it also disrupts social and economic activities across coastal areas. Furthermore, it is a contentious political issue on which Republicans and Democrats have grown further apart. Coastal communities’ policy responses to sea level rise have varied across the United States over the last two decades, ranging from benign neglect, undertaking risk assessments, updating building codes, to protecting coastal ecosystem and shorelines. The study’s research questions are: (1) What are the specific argument structures used by elected officials and the public in the public meetings? (2) How do the specific argument structures used by different groups of public participants (e.g., representatives from the for-profit, non-profit and community sectors) relate to the votes of elected officials? The study is based on comparative case studies of the three counties most at risk from sea level rise in the U.S.: Miami Dade County, FL; Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; and San Mateo County, California. To answer these questions, we will use publicly available public meeting videos and transcriptions from 2017 to 2020. We will identify public meeting episodes where there was a policy proposition related to sea level rise along with a public comment element and a policy decision (including the decision not to act). We will transcribe these episodes verbatim and use pre-coding, first and second cycle coding techniques (Saldana 2015). We will then compare the public’s argument structures during the comment period with elected official’s structures provided after the public comment period. An interesting component of our research here will be to see if elected officials relate their argument structures more to select few groups (e.g., business owners, homeowners, males, Whites, and first speakers) than to others (e.g., residents, renters, females, and non-Whites). The study is part of a larger project through which we plan to analyze sea level rise decision making processes for top 30 cities most at risk from sea level rise across the U.S. using the development and application of novel natural language processing (NLP) methods. Such an analysis of argument structures across a large set of public meetings will be transformative for advancing policy science. We can portray how employing specific argument structures could result in particular public policy outcomes.

Authors

• NAZIFE EMEL GANAPATI

• Susannah Bruns Ali, Florida International University