Why Some Crises Change Policy—and Others Do Not

Nguyen Phuong Tri

Nguyen Tat Thanh University

23-05-2026

© Javier Allegue Barros

Crises are often portrayed as moments that change policies. Economic recessions reshape financial regulations. Natural disasters transform environmental policies. Pandemics alter healthcare systems. In politics, crises are frequently treated as powerful engines of change—events that disrupt stability and push governments to act (Birkland, 1997; Knill & Steinebach, 2022; Hinterleitner, Knill, & Steinebach, 2024).

But what exactly makes something a crisis?

At first glance, the answer seems obvious. A crisis should involve serious, measurable problems: rising unemployment, collapsing banks, large migration flows, or public health emergencies. Yet reality often behaves in more puzzling ways. Sometimes societies react dramatically to dangers that create little direct material impact. At other times, severe problems unfold quietly with surprisingly limited political response.

Consider Germany after the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011. Although the disaster occurred thousands of kilometers away and posed no direct radiation threat to Germany itself, public concern surged and contributed to the country’s dramatic nuclear phase-out policy known as Energiewende (Rinscheid, 2015). Meanwhile, many banking crises with severe financial distress indicators have generated little public attention and only modest policy responses (Baron, Verner, & Xiong, 2020).

If crises drive policy change, why do some crises make change while others barely move anything?

A recent study in Policy Studies Journal examined this question by separating crises into two components: objective pressures and public perceptions. Objective pressures refer to measurable conditions—such as migration numbers, economic indicators, or environmental changes. Public perceptions refer to how strongly society believes something constitutes a crisis (Kaplaner et al., 2026).

Using 25 years of migration policy data from Switzerland, researchers found that these two dimensions do not always align.

When both objective conditions and public perceptions simultaneously indicate crisis, policy activity tends to be strongest and major reforms become more likely. When both remain low, policy systems generally remain stable. More interestingly, when only one component becomes elevated, different forms of policy change emerge. High objective pressure without public alarm often produces technical adjustments and administrative changes. Conversely, strong public concern without corresponding objective pressures tends to generate more symbolic or politically driven responses.

These results reveal an irony: policies designed to manage reality sometimes respond less to reality itself than to collective interpretations of reality (Nguyen & Ho, 2026; Tran, 2026).

Imagine a fire alarm ringing in a building. One scenario with no threats would involve everyone running frantically toward exits even though there is no fire. Another would involve smoke filling hallways while people calmly continue drinking coffee because no alarm sounds. Both situations appear absurd, yet political systems can behave in surprisingly similar ways.

The absurdity becomes deeper because perceptions themselves are real in their consequences (Vuong, 2025). Fear, uncertainty, and public attention shape elections, institutions, and social behavior regardless of whether they perfectly reflect measurable conditions.

Perhaps crises are not simply events waiting to be discovered. They may emerge through interactions between material conditions and human meaning-making. The challenge, then, may not be asking whether a crisis is “real” or “imagined.” Instead, it may involve recognizing that societies often live in the uncomfortable space between the two (Khuc & Nguyen, 2026).

References

Baron, M., Verner, E., & Xiong, W. (2020). Banking crises without panics. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 136(1), 51–113. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjaa034

Birkland, T. A. (1997). After disaster: Agenda setting, public policy, and focusing events. Georgetown University Press.

Hinterleitner, M., Knill, C., & Steinebach, Y. (2024). The growth of policies, rules, and regulations: A review of the literature and research agenda. Regulation & Governance, 18,(2), 637–654. https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12511

Kaplaner, C. et al. (2026). Facets of crises: How problem indicators and public perceptions affect policy change. Policy Studies Journal. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.70126 

Khuc, V. Q., & Nguyen, M. H. (2026). Cultural Additivity Theory. Available at SSRN 6767760. https://ssrn.com/abstract=6767760

Knill, C., & Steinebach, Y. (2022). Crises as driver of policy accumulation: Regulatory change and ratcheting in German asylum policies between 1975 and 2019. Regulation & Governance, 16(2), 603–617. https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12379

Nguyen, M. H., & Ho, M. T. (2026). The absurdist approach to unveiling possible paradoxical thinking for innovative socio-psychological research. MethodsX, 16, 103910. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mex.2026.103910

Rinscheid, A. (2015). Crisis, policy discourse, and major policy change: Exploring the role of subsystem polarization in nuclear energy policymaking. European Policy Analysis, 1(2), 34–70. https://doi.org/10.18278/epa.1.2.3

Tran, T. M. A. (2026). Conversations with Kingfisher: Wisdom from Vuong’s wild wise weird stories. Planet Forward. https://planetforward.org/story/kingfisher-stories/   

Vuong, Q. H. (2025). Wild Wise Weird. AISDL. https://books.google.com/books?id=C5dDEQAAQBAJ