ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the discovery that the cultural theory model is quite illuminating for the politics of risk management, but with a structure modified in such a way that it reflects political realities rather than sociological theories. All the theories are in one sense models. A simple structure is presented whose explanation effectively constitutes the theory. Cultural theory has been around the longest, and in spite of its acknowledged difficulties still has broad support among analysts. The chapter compares the theories, adapt where that seems useful, and finally explores whether a partial synthesis would be useful. It provides the political structure of risks, in terms of background variables from both of the double-dichotomy classifications, and then to relates this approach to the insights of post-normal science. The chapter also explores the question of how successfully the several different sorts of structure, each with their own theoretical frameworks, can be adapted to each other.
