The Politics of Shark Attacks: Explaining policy responses following shark bites in Florida, Cape Town, and New South Wales

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the policymaking process during emotionally charged periods by comparing responses to shark bites in three locations. It examines the factors that explain policies which followed incidents in the American state of Florida, the South African City of Cape Town, and the Australian state of New South Wales. Each location reacted differently to these events, with Florida banning eco-tourism shark feeding, Cape Town adopting a Shark Spotter program, and New South Wales funding aerial patrols. Shark bite policy responses are emblematic of other emotion-laden and seemingly knee-jerk policy responses, yet explaining why one issue or event produces a reaction while another does not remains an elusive question. This study constructs a theoretical framework to analyze the policy process based on the roles of affect, salience, policy entrepreneurship, and causal stories. A high affect-low threshold (HALT) framework is utilized to analyze shark bite policy responses in three ways. First, the HALT framework illustrates the way negative high affect-high salient events can be aggregated into a representative dreaded outcome. Secondly, it demonstrates the way aggregate dreaded outcomes place pressures on key actors to lower policy thresholds. Thirdly, it shows how the pressures from these aversive problem conditions encourage entrepreneurs to select quickly adoptable measures that provide positive affective relief. This framework was utilized in each case study and showed how the speed and direction of policy responses was influenced. In Florida, the governor opened the policy process when faced with the dread of tourism losses and encouraged adoption of a regulatory ban. In Cape Town, community stakeholders lowered the threshold in fear of political involvement and guided the adoption of the Shark Spotter program. In New South Wales, a minister used his office to announce a plan for aerial patrols to interrupt a series of political controversies.