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.

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