Beyond Safety? The Broadening Scope of Risk Regulation
Current Legal Problems, Forthcoming
44 Pages Posted: 20 Jun 2012
Date Written: June 20, 2012
Abstract
This paper examines a consistent mismatch between the rhetoric and practice of regulation. It argues that whilst the politics of regulation, that is the relevance of social, political and ethical considerations, are to all appearances now perfectly mainstream, acceptance of the broad nature of regulation rarely feeds through into decision making. Whatever the rhetoric, when it comes to the crunch and a decision needs to be justified and explained, the instinct is to turn to technical expertise on ‘safety’ and ‘risk’, sidestepping more broadly conceptualised concerns about the social or ethical commitments embedded in a technology. This ambivalence, whilst sometimes acknowledged, is not generally pursued very far into regulatory practice, either in the academic literature, which continues to urge responsiveness to the broad nature of decisions, or in the policy literature, which behaves as if all is well now that the politics of regulation are understood. And yet the gap between what is said (the politics of regulation) and what is done (expert assessment of safety and risk) raises important normative implications for those of us interested in the regulation of areas of high technical complexity. Not only do risk and safety fail to capture all that is at stake, but the current approach brings with it great costs to accountability, as well as raising profound questions about how and by whom decisions should best be taken.
Keywords: risk, regulation, nuclear, nanotechnology, GMOs
JEL Classification: K10, K20, K32
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation