Understanding policy change in flood risk management

Policy change in the field of flood risk management is important as it alters the direction of attention, effort and investment. We elaborate three models of policy change developed in the political science literature. These models embrace concepts such as ‘policy streams’, ‘advocacy coalitions’, and ‘punctuated equilibrium’ and each has been important in illuminating the process of policy change in different discipline areas in the last 20 or 30 years. Each has been refined over this time but remains fundamentally unchanged. From this elaboration we distil an integrated model that we believe is particularly applicable to flood risk management, and have some general applicability outside the UK where it originated. This model emphasises both catalytic and incremental policy change, the former related to national scale flood events and the latter to intervening relatively flood-free periods.