Investigating how the political will for strengthening resilience has developed within Bristol

Abstract: This study investigates how the political will for strengthening resilience has developed within the city of Bristol, focusing on how this is shaped by factors at local, national and international scales. Thematic analysis of Bristol City Council policy documents and interviews with participants from a range of different organisations throughout the city are used to gather data. The findings are analysed using a framework adapted from existing work on the political economy of disaster risk reduction, which reconceptualises political will to be an emergent property, that is realised when authorities have the motivation to strengthen resilience to disaster risk, and the broader political economy creates incentives to be able to pursue that agenda. The study presents many findings that are relevant for Bristol, and some for other cities worldwide. Three underlying motivations for strengthening resilience are identified, and are found to be deeply embedded within the population and institutions of the city. More incentives are found to be emerging from the local and international-scale than the national-scale, which instead provides several barriers to the city authorities’ efforts to strengthen resilience. Ultimately the study concludes that the most important finding is the role that Bristol’s legacy as a city that prioritises environmental sustainability and progressive social innovation, plays in shaping its contemporary political will for strengthening resilience. It is also noted that the study is highly exploratory, and the methodological framework should be applied to other case studies before broader conclusions could be induced.