The Science of Oil Spills: Understanding the Policy Shift During the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
(2018) STVK03 20181Department of Political Science
- Abstract
- In the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 the spill mitigation response focused heavily on coastal protection, a method recommended by government scientists—despite the fact that the majority of the spill was contained in the water column and never threatened the coast. A few months into the spill, the response policy shifted to include deepwater dimensions, something independent scientists had been advocating from the start. The aim for this thesis is to understand how the shift in response policy occurred. By drawing on Christina Boswell’s theory of the political uses of expert knowledge, and John Kingdon’s multiple streams framework, I conducted a case study of the knowledge utilization during the Deepwater Horizon... (More)
- In the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 the spill mitigation response focused heavily on coastal protection, a method recommended by government scientists—despite the fact that the majority of the spill was contained in the water column and never threatened the coast. A few months into the spill, the response policy shifted to include deepwater dimensions, something independent scientists had been advocating from the start. The aim for this thesis is to understand how the shift in response policy occurred. By drawing on Christina Boswell’s theory of the political uses of expert knowledge, and John Kingdon’s multiple streams framework, I conducted a case study of the knowledge utilization during the Deepwater Horizon response. I found that the policy shift was a shift not in the use of expert knowledge, but a shift in the problem understanding—which provided an opening for subsurface oil to become part of the policy—hence the policy shift. I also found that the decision makers might have been more reluctant to consider suggestions provided by the independent scientists, since only when government scientists conducted their own testing which verified the independent scientists’ findings were these considered. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/8938864
- author
- Englund, Nikita LU
- supervisor
-
- Åsa Knaggård LU
- organization
- course
- STVK03 20181
- year
- 2018
- type
- M2 - Bachelor Degree
- subject
- keywords
- Deepwater Horizon, oil spill, expert knowledge, knowledge utilization, multiple streams framework
- language
- English
- id
- 8938864
- date added to LUP
- 2018-08-22 15:05:22
- date last changed
- 2018-08-22 15:05:22
@misc{8938864,
abstract = {{In the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 the spill mitigation response focused heavily on coastal protection, a method recommended by government scientists—despite the fact that the majority of the spill was contained in the water column and never threatened the coast. A few months into the spill, the response policy shifted to include deepwater dimensions, something independent scientists had been advocating from the start. The aim for this thesis is to understand how the shift in response policy occurred. By drawing on Christina Boswell’s theory of the political uses of expert knowledge, and John Kingdon’s multiple streams framework, I conducted a case study of the knowledge utilization during the Deepwater Horizon response. I found that the policy shift was a shift not in the use of expert knowledge, but a shift in the problem understanding—which provided an opening for subsurface oil to become part of the policy—hence the policy shift. I also found that the decision makers might have been more reluctant to consider suggestions provided by the independent scientists, since only when government scientists conducted their own testing which verified the independent scientists’ findings were these considered.}},
author = {{Englund, Nikita}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{The Science of Oil Spills: Understanding the Policy Shift During the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill}},
year = {{2018}},
}