Like many low- and middle-income countries worldwide, Chile must be better prepared for environmental disasters at the local scale; this is an undeniable fact. Both scholars and practitioners require a deeper understanding of the determinants of local government performance. 

Understanding and achieving future success hinges on identifying the institutional settings and factors that result in the best decisions and outcomes. Local governments play a crucial role in environmental disaster risk management (EDRM), climate change adaptation, and other domains pursuing sustainable development through interventions and actions, such as investments in critical public infrastructure to reinforce resilience (e.g., roads, bridges, drinking water, stormwater, sewage systems). However, many local governments struggle to provide these public goods for their citizens. Often, inequalities, weak governance, and missing institutional arrangements are among the constraints limiting the ability of local governments. Faced with increased environmental risks, local governments exhibit enormous variability in their responses to these challenges. While some fail to take preventive measures to mitigate such risks, others perform remarkably well. . 

The purpose of our research is to analyze motivations and institutional conditions that increase the likelihood of local government effectiveness in responding to the threats of climate change, extreme weather events, and disaster risks.

The main focus is to find institutional settings and factors that foster a proactive local government adaptation. The project proposes testable institutional hypotheses around the effects of institutional capacities, network relationships, and policy leadership under beneficial conditions of key institutional settings (e.g., accountability, transparency, internal organization, linking social capital, and multilevel governance relationships) (available at Publications).

The research analyzes these ideas using mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative) and unique over-time observations in almost all Chilean municipalities with data available since 2000 (e.g., official documents and registries, semi-structured interviews, surveys, statistics). This dynamic comparative analytical approach allows the project to produce and contribute new knowledge on the drivers of institutional change and adaptation. The project generates robust evidence on the conditions under which local governments are more likely to be adaptatores (available at Publications).

Methodologically, existing studies on institutions rely predominantly on case studies with a low number of observations, without mixed methods or analyzing over-time dynamics. Robust, evidence-based knowledge is necessary to understand how existing institutional arrangements, policies, and practices need to be modified to improve local government performance. The use of mixed methods and longitudinal data analysis allows the project to do two novel things: (1) test hypotheses about relationships between institutional settings and factors, local government decisions, and outcomes through dynamic analysis, and (2) estimate the effect of climate change and extreme events that have occurred over a period of two decades. This approach also enables researchers to study the adaptive nature of institutions—the idea that institutional arrangements emerge as responses to specific events and situations—which is difficult to accomplish effectively with cross-sectional data alone.

The projects incorporate frameworks and rigorous research conducted over the last ten years. The theoretical expectations, hypotheses, methodologies, and results are enriched by ongoing reflection and feedback from researchers and policymakers during research and dissemination activities (e.g., interviews, seminars, workshops, discussion groups) (available at Activities). The project produces scientific contributions to be submitted to international academic peer-reviewed journals (available at Publications).

This research provides additional benefits to local decision-makers as well as the academic community. By building on the research team’s current engagement and repeated interactions with governance actors, the project’s results and knowledge are more likely to be perceived by these actors as relevant and credible, with the potential to inform local policy decisions to usher in more effective preparation, response, and resilience to extreme weather events and environmental risk reduction. As contributions to human capital formation, graduate and undergraduate students benefit from the project through training and participation in field-based data collection (details available at Theses).