300127 Risk Governance: The growth of risk regulation (englisch) (S) (SoSe 2007)

In recent years risk has become a central concern of governance. The language of risk has been taken up in a wide range of domains and is fast becoming the lingua franca of finance, business, and general public policies. Risk appears to be on its way to becoming a common instrument of decision-making.

A cursory examination already suggests that contemporary risk governance has expanded and changed to embrace more, as well as different kinds of, risk. There has been a quantitative expansion that has seen risk analysis and management methods become proceduralised within the governance of a wider range of risks to individual members of society. There has also been a qualitative shift towards the proceduralisation of risk assessment and management methods within the governance of risks to private and public sector organisations.

A number of explanations for the growth of risk-based governance can be found, such as greater efficiency, the growth of the Risk Society, or the iteration of the ¿Audit Explosion¿ (fostered by an increasing climate of distrust, high profile policy failures, a growing compensation culture and consultancy companies in search of new fads to sell). In this class, we explore these and other contemporary theories on risk governance and consider the extent to which they can account for the observed growth of risk-based governance in a range of regulatory domains.

Bibliography

Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society, London: Sage.
Black, J. (2002) Critical reflections on regulation. London. CARR Discussion paper 4
Ericson, R., Barry, D. and Doyle, A. (2000) The Moral Hazards of Neo-liberalism: lessons from the private insurance industry in Economy and Society, 29(4): 532-558.
Foucault, M. (1991) Governmentality. In: Burchell, G., Gordon, C. and Miller, P. (eds.) The Foucault Effect. Studies in Governmentality. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf
Hood, C. (2002) The risk game and the blame game, Government and Opposition 37(1):15-37.
Hood, C., Rothstein, H. and Baldwin, R. (2001) The Government of Risk. Understanding Risk Regulation Regimes, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hutter, B. (2005) The Attractions of Risk-based Regulation: accounting for the emergence of risk ideas in regulation. Discussion Paper No. 33. CARR, LSE: London
Luhmann, N. (1993) Risk: A Sociological Theory, Berlin.
Luhmann, N. (1998) Observations on Modernity, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Majone, G. (2003) (ed.) Risk regulation in the European Union: Between Enlargement and Internationalisation, European University Institute: Florence (http://www.iue.it/RSCAS/)
Power, M. (1997) The Audit Society, Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Power, M. (2004) The Risk Management of Everything: Rethinking the Politics of Uncertainty. DEMOS: London.
Rose, N. (1999) Powers of Freedom: Reframing political thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vogel, D. (2003) The Hare and the Tortoise Revisited: The New Politics of Consumer and Environmental Regulation in Europe, British Journal of Political Science, 33:557-580.
Wilson, J. (1980) The Politics of Regulation, New York: Basic Books.