ABSTRACT
To suggest that a sound policy solution to potential risks requires understanding and responsiveness is unlikely to surprise or illuminate the reader. The discussion becomes more intriguing though if we ask what such understanding and responsiveness should look like. Broadly speaking, the question has had two answers built around two distinguishable, theoretical approaches. For convenience, they may be labelled risk analysis and risk governance. Risk analysis – at times described as traditional risk governance – involves risk assessment, risk management and risk communication. Essentially, the focus has been on an analytical and technical understanding based on scientific method: quantitative risk assessments are therefore preferred; risk management is reduced to interpreting quantitative results and controlling their impact, and risk communication is an exercise aimed at bridging the tensions that may arise between risk assessors and the public (Aven and Renn 2010: 50–52). The public is the passive recipient of the risk assessor’s solutions and is, by implication, part of the matrix of circumstances that needs to be risk-managed. Once scientific understanding through risk assessment is achieved, what counts as proper responsiveness – broadly framed as a blend of risk management and risk communication – follows. One might say that, in the case of risk analysis, understanding acts as a necessary and sufficient condition for responsiveness. Once determined, scientific truth – mostly under the control of ‘experts’ – will deliver ipso facto an acceptable response to potentially risky events. 1
