Henry Rothstein

A theory of risk colonization: The spiralling regulatory logics of societal and institutional risk

Abstract Explanations of the growing importance of risk to regulation identify three processes; the need to respond to newly created and discovered risks; the growth of regulatory frameworks; and the use of the risk instrument as an organizing idea for decision-making in modernity. Synthesizing these explanations, we propose a theory of risk colonization. We introduce a distinction between societal and institutional risks, the former referring to threats to members of society and their environment, and the latter referring to threats to regulatory organizations and/or the legitimacy of rules and methods of regulation. We argue that pressures towards greater coherence, transparency, and accountability of the regulation of societal risks can create institutional risks by exposing the inevitable limitations of regulation. In the first stage of risk colonization, framing the objects of regulation as ‘risks’ serves as a useful instrument for reflexively managing the associated institutional threats. This can be followed, in a second stage, by a dynamic tension between the management of societal and institutional risks that results in spiralling feedback loops. The very process of regulating societal risks gives rise to institutional risks, the management of which sensitizes regulators to take account of societal risks in different ways. We discuss links between this theory and the concept of governmentality and conclude with some speculations about the possible positive and negative consequences of risk colonization.

Regulatory science—Towards a sociological framework☆

Abstract The close relationship between scientific expertise and regulatory policy in certain controversial and public areas has prompted commentators to suggest the concept of ‘regulatory science’. However, definition is generally constrained either to the concerns of regulatory science or to its context. This paper proposes an approach to regulatory science which is both empirically-based and allows a more theoretical treatment of the new conditions of scientific and regulatory activity. A particular case-study of the British agrochemicals sector is presented in terms of a five-way analytical framework for regulatory science. The paper concludes by considering the wider relevance of regulatory science for future sociological and policy research.

Risk regulation under pressure: problem solving or blame shifting?

This article explores a style-phase model of staged organizational responses to external pressure for change against two competing hypotheses, focusing on demands for greater openness and transparency. A study of six risk regulation regimes in the United Kingdom revealed that only half were exposed to substantial pressures of this type. Responses of organizations in the “high-pressure” regimes were varied, but the overall pattern was consistent with a mixture of an autopoietic and staged-response hypothesis stressing blame prevention, and the article accordingly presents a hybrid “Catherine Wheel” model of the observed pattern. The article concludes by discussing the implications for policy outcomes.

The institutional origins of risk: A new agenda for risk research

Abstract The emergence of risk as an organizing concept for regulation and governance has been the subject of considerable comment and debate, most notably in relation to Ulrich Becks Risk Society thesis. This editorial, however, argues that contemporary preoccupations with risk are driven less by a changing distribution of real, or imagined, ills in society, than by a changing distribution of ills in governance. It argues that the inevitable difficulty of managing threats to society (societal risks) creates threats to organizations managing those risks (institutional risks). The potential for failure has always been part of governance, but contemporary pressures towards greater coherence, transparency and accountability have amplified institutional risks by exposing the practical limits of governance. Framing the objects of governance in terms of risk, however, provides a way of reflexively managing the associated institutional threats by explicitly anticipating the practical limits of governance within probabilistic calculations of success and failure. This editorial outlines how the institutional dynamics of contemporary governance can lead to a phenomenon of ‘risk colonization’, whereby risk increasingly comes to define the object, methods and rationale of governance. It then goes on to consider some of the possible positive and negative consequences of risk colonization and concludes by suggesting ways in which the study of institutional risk can help us understand the relationship between risk and governance.

Regulatory Science, Europeanization, and the Control of Agrochemicals

This article addresses issues of regulatory convergence and Europeanization as they have developed within the agrochemicals sector. Taking the United Kingdom as a case study, the article considers the continuing importance of local and national factors within systems that are ostensibly international and standardized. In particular, the article shows how the embedded social relations of regulatory science in the United Kingdom, including institutional practices, judgments of expertise, and established relationships of trust, result in a “nation centeredness” and divergence of regulatory cultures despite the putative development of a harmonized European framework. It is argued that, as a consequence, the claimed universalism of scientific culture in this area is in tension with the local conditions of its practice and enactment.

The risk organisation: or how organisations reconcile themselves to failure

Over the last decade, the ideas, concepts and tools of risk management have colonised the way that organisations frame potential adverse outcomes associated with their activities. Intended as a means of optimising the tolerance, rather than elimination, of adverse organisational outcomes, risk management has been promoted as a means of challenging organisational practice, particularly in the context of heightened accountability pressures that can readily make organisations risk averse. Relatively little attention, however, has been paid to the extent to which risk ideas are able to challenge traditional organisational ways of understanding and responding to adverse outcomes. In this article, therefore, we examine the implementation of risk management practices in two contrasting organisational contexts; the UK Department for the Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the English university sector. Our studies suggest that risk management processes can be readily filtered and reinterpreted through a series of ideological, methodological and organisational mechanisms to reflect and reinforce organisational understandings and practices. We build on this analysis to point to what might tentatively be termed ‘Risk Organizations’, which are distinctive, at least in principle, by the way in which they seek to identify, but also come to terms with, failure. As such, rather than providing a means of organisational challenge, the systematic application of risk management practices tends to act as a conservative force of organisational continuity.

Mobilizing risk: explaining policy transfer in food and occupational safety regulation in the UK

Using comparative methods of policy analysis, this paper explores the institutional factors shaping the transfer and adaptation of risk-based approaches to regulation within and between the regimes for occupational health and safety (OHS) and food safety in the UK. Over the past two decades successive governments have enthusiastically promoted risk as a key concept for regulatory reform and ‘better regulation’. Rather than trying to prevent all possible harms, ‘risk-based’ approaches promise to make regulation more proportionate and effective by using various risk-based metrics and policy instruments to focus regulatory standard-setting and enforcement activity on the highest priority risks, as determined through formal assessments of their probability and consequences. But despite facing similar external pressures and sharing many historical and structural features as OHS, food safety regulation has proven much less receptive to risk-based reforms of its organizing principles and practices. To explain that anomaly, we consider a range of explanations highlighted in the policy transfer and mobilities literatures. We find that coercive drivers for the adoption of risk, in the form of top-down political pressure for deregulation or hard EU mandates, are much less influential than voluntary ones, which reflect both normative (ie, shared commitments to proportionality, resource prioritization, and blame deflection) and mimetic (ie, imitation of private sector corporate governance models) isomorphism. We conclude with wider reflections about the significance of our cases for policy transfer and mobilities research and for the limits to risk as a universal principle for organizing, and accounting for, governance activity. Keywords: risk governance, policy mobilities, food safety, occupational health and safety, risk-based regulation

Explaining risk regulation regimes: exploring the 'minimal feasible response' hypothesis

Abstract This paper provides an analytic description of four health-related risk regulation regimes in the UK (governing radon in the home, dangerous dogs outside the home, pesticide residues in food and water, and ambient benzene). It compares observed state activity for information-gathering, standard-setting and behaviour modification or enforcement in those four regimes with what would be expected from the standpoint of a ‘minimal feasible response’ hypothesis. Such a hypothesis assumes state activity will consist of the minimal level of intervention needed to correct specific failures in market or tort-law processes (where the costs of informing oneself about risks or opting out of risks through market or civil law methods are very high). Only one out of the four cases (dogs) fits the minimal feasible response hypothesis (and even that not completely), and observed regimes differ from the minimal feasible response pattern in terms of both greater-than-expected and lesser-than-expected regulation. The...

Domesticating participation: participation and the institutional rationalities of science-based policy-making in the UK food standards agency

This article explores the institutional factors shaping the impacts of public participation on the processes and outcomes of science-based policy-making. The article draws on the example of UK food safety regulation, which has been at the forefront of attempts in the UK to actively engage the public in decision-making since the creation of the UK Food Standards Agency in 2000. Four diverse examples of participative processes dating from the late 1990s to the present day are explored in order to chart how conceptions of participative reforms have changed over time and to analyse the impacts of those reforms on policy processes and outcomes. The article shows how the impact of participative practices on policy-making has been dependent on their ability to adapt to, and reinforce, rather than challenge, deeply entrenched policy-making norms, practices and cultures. Where participative processes have posed challenges, they have tended to be conceived and organised in ways that have minimised threats to policy practice. The analysis shows how, over time, the conceptions and practices of participation are dynamically shaped by active processes of ‘domestication’, whereby practices are institutionally ‘selected’ and ‘adapted’ to fit with entrenched policy needs, demands and expectations.

Talking shops or talking Turkey? : Institutionalizing consumer representation in risk regulation

Participative reforms to risk regulation are often argued to enhance the evidence base, improve the representation of the public interest, and build support for policy processes and outcomes. While rationales and mechanisms for participation have received most scholarly attention, less attention has been paid to the actual impact of participation on policy processes and outcomes. This article, therefore, considers the impacts of participation by examining the UK Food Standards Agencys (FSA) Consumer Committee, which was created in 2002 to institutionalize consumer representation within policy making, but which was disbanded as a failure in 2005. Using three case studies, the article identifies two broad institutional dimensions of regulation that shaped and constrained the committees impact on the evidence base, policy outcomes and building support for policy, and contributed to its eventual failure. Those dimensions relate to the design and organization of regulatory regimes, and to the understandings and influence of regulatory actors.