Risk Analysis And Governance In Eu Policy Making And Regulation

This book provides an easy, but comprehensive and rigorous access to the main concepts, terminology, methods and procedures of risk analysis intended for all those involved in the EU policy and regulatory decision making on risks. It establishes a common ground of knowledge which enables a more informed dialogue on risks, a closer collaboration between decision makers and scientists and a better appraisal of the potential and limits of risk science. The book also brings together in an accessible way much multidisciplinary knowledge which had been dispersed over many technical documents and specialist books. The EU is in the front line of health, safety and environmental risk management. GMOs, food safety, hazardous chemicals, climate change, radiation hazards, are just a few of the popular risk issues addressed by the EU through policy and regulatory measures. The risk analysis paradigm, including risk assessment, management and communication has been at the core of the EU decision making for a long time already. EU Institutions strive for a science-based approach to risk management. Nevertheless, the dialogue and collaboration on risk issues between policy makers, stakeholders and scientists are still difficult and the potential and limits of science in support of decision making, as well as the basic concepts of risk analysis are not fully understood outside the narrow specialist circles.

This book sets out a novel conceptual and analytical framework to explain why risk analysis, cost-benefit analysis, and similar analytical tools have gained sizeable currency in public administrations, in comparative perspective. Situated in critical interpretive policy analysis methodology, the book systematizes and innovates respective debates in three ways. First, it develops a novel typology of actors’ appreciations of analytical tools as instrumental problem-solving, legitimacy-seeking, and power-seeking. It conceptualizes the latter two as "polity policies" with actors seeking to confirm or rework decision-making structures. Second, the book theorizes how executive fragmentation and the multiplication of coordination requirements – often treated as hindrances to substantial analytical turns in an administration – nourish actors’ ideal typical appreciations of analytical tools in distinct ways. Lastly, it scrutinizes varieties of risk analysis across three risk-heavy policy domains in Germany (including the EU) and discusses the potential of risk analysis to stabilize or transform decision-making in multi-level settings. This book will be of key interest to policy analysts and risk analysts, and scholars of European politics, comparative politics, policy studies, public administration, multi-level governance, EU studies, risk analysis, policy evaluation, and the political sociology of quantification.

A growing body of EU law and regulation is preoccupied with the protection of EU citizens from health and environmental risks. Which chemicals are safe and should be allowed on the market? How should the EU respond to public health emergencies, such as Ebola and other infectious diseases? Regulatory responses to these questions confront deep uncertainty, limited knowledge and societal contestation. In a time where the use of scientific expertise in EU policy-making is particularly contested, this book offers a timely contribution to both the academic and policy debate on the role of specialised expertise in EU public decision-making on risk and technology as well as on its intertwinement with executive power. It draws on insights from law, governance, political sciences, and science and technology studies, bringing together leading scholars in this field. Contributions are drawn together by a shared theoretical perspective, namely by their use of co-production as an analytical lens to study the intricate interplay between techno-scientific expertise and EU executive power. By so doing, this collection produces highly original insights into the development of the EU administrative state, as well as into the role of regulatory science in its construction. This book will be useful to scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers working on risk regulation and the role of expertise in public decision-making.

Animal cloning, nanotechnology, and genetic modifications are all examples of recent controversies around food regulation where scientific evidence occupies a central position. This book provides a fresh perspective on EU scientific food safety governance by offering a legal insight into risk analysis and the precautionary principle, positioned as general principles of EU food law. To explain what the science-based requirement means in EU multi-level governance, this book places these principles in the legislative dynamics of the EU internal market and the meta-framework of the international trade regime established by the WTO. Numerous examples of the case-law of European Courts show implications of risk analysis and science-based food law for EU and national decision makers, as well as food businesses. This book focuses on the crucial aspects of the risk analysis methodology. It redefines the precautionary principle and clarifies its scope of application. It analyses the extent to which non-scientific factors, such as consumers' risk perception, local traditions or ethical considerations, can be taken into account at national and EU level. This book argues that, compared to EU institutions, the autonomy allocated to national authorities is much more limited, which raises questions about the legitimacy of food safety governance in the EU.

There is an increasing dissatisfaction about how risk is regulated, leading to vivid debates about the use of 'risk assessment' and 'precaution'. As a result, academics, government officials and industry leaders are calling for new approaches and fresh ideas. This book provides a historical and topical perspective on the alternative concept of 'Tolerability of Risk' and its concrete regulatory applications. In the UK, Tolerability of Risk has been developed into a sophisticated framework, particularly within the health and safety sectors. It is expected to guide decision-makers when applying their legal obligation of keeping risks as low as practically reasonable. Could Tolerability of Risk become a wider source of inspiration across the full scope of risk analysis and management? Written by leading academics and risk practitioners from industry and government, The Tolerability of Risk presents a summary of theoretical perspectives on risk approaches, providing a detailed elicitation of the methods and approaches used to build the Tolerability of Risk framework and examining the prospect of universal application of that framework. From nuclear power to environmental pollution, climate change and drug testing, the Tolerability of Risk framework may offer a workable, pragmatic solution for balancing risks against the costs involved in controlling them, as well as developing the institutional capacity to make effective decisions in all jurisdictions worldwide.

This multi-disciplinary book conceptualizes, maps, and analyses ongoing standardization processes of risk issues across various sectors, processes, and practices. Standards are not only technical specifications and guidelines to support efficient risk governance, but also contain social, political, economic, and organizational aspects. This book presents a variety of standardization processes and applications of standards that may influence our judgements of risk, the organizing of risk governance, and, accordingly, our behaviour. Standardization and standards can impact risk governance in different ways. The most important lessons drawn from the present volume can be summarized in three areas: (1) how standardization might impact on power relations and interests; (2) how standardization may change flexibility in decision-making, communication, and cooperation; and (3) how standardization could (re)direct attention and risk perception. The volume’s aim is to present an analysis of standardization processes and how it affects our thinking about risk, how we organize risk governance, and how standardization may influence risk management. In so doing, it contributes to a more informed discourse regarding the use of standards and standardization in contemporary risk management. Standardization and Risk Governance will be of great interest to students of risk, standardization, global governance, and critical security studies.

This publication presents recent OECD papers on risk and regulatory policy. They offer measures for developing, or improving, coherent risk governance policies.

This book advances a novel interpretation of EU governance. Its central claim is that the EU's regulatory successes within-and increasingly beyond-its borders rest on the emergence of a recursive process of framework rule making and revision by European and national actors across a wide range of policy domains. In this architecture, framework goals and measures for gauging their achievement are established by joint action of the Member States and EU institutions. Lower-level units are given the freedom to advance these ends as they see fit. But in return for this autonomy, they must report regularly on their performance and participate in a peer review in which their results are compared with those of others pursuing different means to the same general ends. The framework goals, performance measures, and decision-making procedures are themselves periodically revised by the actors, including new participants whose views come to be seen as indispensable to full and fair deliberation. The editors' introduction sets out the core features of this experimentalist architecture and contrasts it to conventional interpretations of EU governance, especially the principal-agent conceptions underpinning many contemporary theories of democratic sovereignty and effective, legitimate law making. Subsequent chapters by an interdisciplinary group of European and North American scholars explore the architecture's applicability across a series of key policy domains, including data privacy, financial market regulation, energy, competition, food safety, GMOs, environmental protection, anti-discrimination, fundamental rights, justice and home affairs, and external relations. Their authoritative studies show both how recent developments often take an experimentalist turn but also admit of multiple, contrasting interpretations or leave open the possibility of reversion to more familiar types of governance. The results will be indispensable for all those concerned with the nature of the EU and its contribution to contemporary governance beyond the nation-state.