Andreas Klinke

Coping with Complexity, Uncertainty and Ambiguity in Risk Governance: A Synthesis

The term governance describes the multitude of actors and processes that lead to collectively binding decisions. The term risk governance translates the core principles of governance to the context of risk-related policy making. We aim to delineate some basic lessons from the insights of the other articles in this special issue for our understanding of risk governance. Risk governance provides a conceptual as well as normative basis for how to cope with uncertain, complex and/or ambiguous risks. We propose to synthesize the breadth of the articles in this special issue by suggesting some changes to the risk governance framework proposed by the International Risk Governance Council (IRGC) and adding some insights to its analytical and normative implications.

Precautionary principle and discursive strategies: classifying and managing risks

The paper covers an integral risk concept consisting of a criteria-based risk evaluation, a novel proposal for risk classification and corresponding risk management strategies aimed at an analytic-deliberative approach in risk regulation. For this purpose, technical and scientific as well as social scientific concepts were integrated into a single conceptual framework. Eight criteria were selected for evaluating risks: probability of occurrence, extent of damage, incertitude, ubiquity, persistency, reversibility, delay effect and potential of mobilization. With respect to these criteria, six risk classes were formed in which risks may exceed thresholds determined by deliberative action. Effective and practicable management strategies were deduced for each risk class. The characterization and classification of risks provide a knowledge base for designing risk policies and class-specific management strategies. Three major management categories were identified: risk-based, precautionary and discursive strategies. In deliberative processes actors need to agree on norms and procedures to manage risks. If the results reflect the agreement of previous discourse procedures, political decisions become more legitimate. Because the risk evaluation, risk classification and management strategies are based on the concept of analytic-deliberative processes, the essential requirements for an effective and democratic risk policy are met.

Adaptive and integrative governance on risk and uncertainty

The article will conceptualize procedural mechanisms and structural configurations of risk governance with adaptive and integrative capacity in a general and comprehensive manner in order to better grasp the dynamics, structures, and functionality of risk-handling processes. Adaptive and integrative risk governance is supposed to address challenges raised by three characteristics that result from a lack of knowledge and/or competing knowledge claims about the risk problem: complexity, scientific uncertainty, and socio-political ambiguity. Adaptive and integrative capacity are broadly seen as the ability of politics and society to collectively design and implement a systematic approach to organizational and policy learning in institutional settings that are conducive to resolve cognitive, evaluative and normative problems, and conflicts of risks. For this purpose, we propose a risk governance model that augments the classical model of risk analysis (risk assessment, management, communication) by including steps of pre-estimation, interdisciplinary risk estimation, risk characterization and evaluation, risk management as well as monitoring and control. This new risk governance model also incorporates expert, stakeholder and public involvement as a core feature in the stage of communication and deliberation. A governance decision tree finally allows a systematic step-by-step procedure for the more inclusive risk-handling process.

Precautionary Risk Regulation in European Governance

This paper develops a sequential model of precautionary risk regulation that contributes substantively and procedurally to the European Commissions position on precaution. At first, four concepts of precautionary policy are distinguished which are taken into account in the conceptualisation of the precautionary risk regulation. The paper then expounds the four key challenges of characterising, evaluating and managing risks: these are seriousness, uncertainty, complexity, and socio-political ambiguity. Subsequently, the architecture of the model of precautionary risk regulation is set out, which is characterised by the following three key stages: screening, appraisal, and management. It additionally includes a design, development and oversight function which ensures that the overall process is robust to changes in circumstances and to the perspective of all interested and affected parties. Afterwards five approaches to risk analysis are elaborated which are integrated in the formal decision analytic concept. They provide tools for assessing, evaluating, and managing serious, uncertain, complex and/or ambiguous risks and include different methods for selecting objectives, assessing and handling data, and finding the most appropriate procedure for balancing pros and cons.

Expertise and experience: a deliberative system of a functional division of labor for post-normal risk governance

Public policy is increasingly facing human-made risks in various domains (technology, environment, energy, food, health, security, etc.) that pose new challenge for risk governance. These risks induce cognitive, evaluative and normative challenges that result from uncertainty and ambiguity. This necessitates a new interplay between the state, experts, stakeholder groups, and the public at large. We confront the notion of risk governance with theories of deliberative democracy: How can societies develop deliberative institutions and processes for governing risks more effectively and how can society be better involved in risk governance? We argue that a deliberative system with a functional division of labor that assigns specific tasks to and recognizes specific competences in experts, stakeholder groups, and citizens facilitates an appropriate integration of scientific and experiential substance. We argue that the integration of expertise and experience can be conveyed by differentiated deliberation by expert, stakeholders, and the public, which produces better outcomes than the classical risk analysis approach in many regulatory systems. To this end, we combine theory, normative conceptualization, and institutional practicability.

Democratizing Regional Environmental Governance: Public Deliberation and Participation in Transboundary Ecoregions

Over the last two decades, transboundary regional environmental governance has witnessed some institutional change through an increasing shift from intergovernmentally constituted political institutions to new complex structures of decision-making where policy-making has begun to adapt to a new, more active role of societal actors at multiple levels of political authority. In addressing this issue, the article raises the following questions: How can new structures and processes of public deliberation and participation in transboundary regional environmental governance be designed, and which opportunities and risks emerge? To address these questions, the article develops a normative-analytical design for regional environmental governance in ecoregions; this design defines the conditions under which public deliberation and participation conveying discourse, argument, and persuasion can help to democratize collective decision-making.

Risk Governance and Resilience: New Approaches to Cope with Uncertainty and Ambiguity

This chapter will address the major functions of the risk governance process: Each of these stages is described in the light three aspects of resilience: adaptive management capability, coping capability, and participative pre-estimation, interdisciplinary risk estimation (including scientific risk assessment and concern assessment), risk characterization and risk evaluation, and risk management, including decision-making and implementation (based on the IRGC risk governance model) capability. Furthermore, the chapter expands this perspective by suggesting four different forms of public and stakeholder involvement for coping with the three aspects of resilience, including a strategy where all none of the three aspects matter. The chapter concludes with some general remarks about the relationship between governance and resilience.

Dynamic multilevel governance for sustainable transformation as postnational configuration

Modern societies are increasingly having to cope with profound socio-political transformations, such as the transition from fossil energy production and consumption to more sustainable energy systems. Transformations ignite dynamics, processes, and forces, which induce new challenges for traditional structures and orders because major changes in society and politics are shifting from established manners, customs, and modes of behavior to new norms and values. Transformations cause epistemological uncertainty and complexity and challenge ontological fundaments and ethical convictions. National structures alone are not adequate to the task of handling the corresponding challenges because the capacity of domestic politics and regulations is too weak to achieve eligible political outcomes that can guide and structure transformations. In this light, I argue for a form of dynamic multilevel governance as a postnational configuration that has the capability and power to reform and transfigure institutions, structure and agency, hierarchies, cultural fabrics, socio-technical systems, and infrastructures toward new social and political orders. I theoretically and normatively conceptualize and justify three major governance framework conditions as hallmarks of dynamic multilevel governance, namely inclusiveness, adaptiveness, and distributed and differentiated deliberation. These capabilities produce reflexive authority with transformative and structuring power to tackle transformation issues. My notion of dynamic multilevel governance relies on thoughts in new institutionalism, network theory, deliberative democracy theory, discourse ethics, and different concepts of governance. I combine theory, normative justification, and institutional feasibility.

A New Tool for Characterizing and Managing Risks

Publisher Summary This chapter proposes a risk classification that summarizes specific risk types and determines particular strategies for rational management of risk types. The classification is presented where single risks are classified as risk types in which they particularly reach or exceed one of the possible extreme qualities. To assure a rational risk-evaluation and an effective risk-communication as part of an overall deliberative procedure, profound scientific knowledge is required, especially of the main criteria of risk evaluation—probability of occurrence, extent of damage, and incertitude—and to the additional evaluative criteria as well. This knowledge has to be collected by scientists and risk professionals who are recognized as competent authorities in the respective risk field. The experiences of risk experts from different technological or environmental fields constitute a comprehensive body of risk knowledge. The systematic search for the state of the art leads to a knowledge base that provides the data for each of the evaluation criteria.

Distributed Responsibility in Risk Governance

The principles of responsibility and accountability have increasingly become a significant concept for the political capability to act independently and make decisions without superior authorization.