Date of Award

Summer 8-2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

School of Public Service

Program/Concentration

Public Administration and Policy

Committee Director

Wie Yusuf

Committee Member

Adam Eckerd

Committee Member

Brandon Butler

Committee Member

Erika Allen-Wolters

Abstract

Oregon's legislature passed Senate Bill 762 (2021) following the state's most devastating wildfire season in 2020, mandating a statewide wildfire risk map as the foundational instrument for mitigation funding, building codes, and defensible space requirements. Within four years, that map was fully repealed by the legislature. Wildfire risk in Oregon did not diminish in those four years. The map's underlying science was not invalidated. The State Insurance Commissioner testified in 2023 that Oregon insurers had not used and had no intention of using the map for coverage decisions. What changed were the narratives constructed around the map across three legislative sessions.

This dissertation applies the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) at the meso-level of analysis to 141 coded legislative testimonies spanning four bills and three sessions (2021, 2023, 2025), examining how three competing coalitions renegotiated the map's narrative identity from setting and emerging hero to universal villain. Using qualitative content analysis, the study documents two principal findings. First, the wildfire risk map migrated out of the narrative setting and into the character system, absorbing villain coding in approximately three-quarters of 2025 testimonies after receiving zero villain codes in 2021. Second, blame attribution progressively narrowed from diffuse natural forces to the map as a direct responsible actor, transforming repeal from a political possibility into a moral necessity.

The findings make three contributions to NPF scholarship: setting is not a fixed ontological category but a contested narrative position that coalitions actively renegotiate across time; blame migration functions as a longitudinal coalition consolidation mechanism extending Stone's (2012) causal story typology; and policy-relevant coalition convergence can be achieved through shared villain targeting without shared substantive belief. For wildfire management practitioners, the findings demonstrate that science-based risk communication instruments serving as regulatory predicates carry unique narrative vulnerability, and that narrative monitoring across legislative sessions provides an early warning system for policy collapse.

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DOI

10.25777/9sxs-zx72

ISBN

9798193216841

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