When Risk-Analysis Needs Hazard-Assessments - Is Risk-Based Regulation Actually Part of the General Risk Discourse?

Beck describes modern societies as preoccupied with the management of novel risks. Recently, this notion of risk was widened by the idea of risk-based regulation as a rational strategy of governance: risk assessments justify the selective spending of scarce resources on extremely harmful events, as well as withholding investments for less significant events. The focus on risk in decision-making represents a paradigm shift away from the idea that government ought to ensure ‘security’. Ewald (and others) have argued that the once central notion of safety (as a dispositive of risk) is no longer relevant and is substituted by precaution. A second observation concerns the non-essentialist character of risk: Michael Power has spoken of the “risk management of everything”, meaning that any event can be transformed into a risk, attributing probability and damage values.

 

The concurrence of both observations requires a new interpretation of risk-based regulation. The focus on efficiency on the one hand and the comprehensive use of risk assessment on the other, raises the issue to what effect probabilities can still be used as a governance tool. Methodologically, there is a tension between the all-inclusiveness of possible harms and the necessity for offsetting all single risks. As a universal tool of description, risk-analysis would need to be able to prioritize between different types of risk. The use of traditional hazard-based assessment strategies in risk-based regulation could be an indication to this unresolved tension.

 

In explaining and developing this position, the paper draws on empirical evidence from UK regulatory agencies. We review the basic statements of regulatory policy-making (e.g. Hampton report) and key political documents (funding documents of regulatory agencies like the Food Safety Agency) to investigate whether the spreading of risk analysis actually hampers the use of risk-based management or if it contributes to the expansion of risk management.