What mechanisms link external events to policy change in a policy subsystem? Thispaper responds to this question by offering a nuanced re-conceptualization ofexternal events and by identifying the mechanisms that link disruptive crises topolicy change. Building from the tenets of the advocacy coalition framework and asynthesis of the crisis management and policy change literatures, this paper (1)introduces the concept of policy and geographical proximity as a means to showhow different types of crises alter the incentives for policy action within policysubsystems; (2) discusses an integrated set of proposals on how geographical andpolicy proximity affects the prospects of change in a policy subsystem; and (3)presents hypothesized scenarios outlining plausible intervening pathways linking acrisis to changes as contingent on policy subsystem structures.