The Government of Risk - Understanding Risk Regulation Regimes

Abstract

The Government of Risk - Understanding Risk Regulation Regimes, by Christopher Hood, Henry Rothstein, and Robert Baldwin, 2001, New York: Oxford University Press Reviewer: Patricia Born, California State University, Northridge The Government of Risk is an interesting guide to the evaluation of risk regulation. It offers a very detailed system for classifying risk regulation which is motivated by a need to understand why society addresses different risks in so many different ways. Risks that get a lot of media attention do not always get heightened regulatory attention. Despite pressures of interest groups, the regulatory responses to some risks may be better explained by historical inertia in the regulating organization. This book examines these types of inconsistencies by disaggregating components of regulatory content and testing competing theories of how various factors influence these components. The first section of the book sets up a system by which risk regulation regimes may be classified. The system is designed to describe regimes-to provide meaningful ways of classifying regimes for a variety of purposes-but not to explain their existence. Since empirical insurance research often involves classification of both legal and regulatory regimes (e.g., rate filing regulation type), the discussion here is quite useful for insurance researchers. Most important, the discussion suggests how a simple categorization (e.g., prior approval rate regulation) may obscure many other dimensions of the regulation activity. In the first two chapters, the authors set up two basic dimensions on which risk regimes could vary: (1) the context and content of and (2) the information-gathering, standard-setting, and behavior modification components of control. The section is long and hard to follow, but this is largely due to the complexity of the authors' task. Classification systems themselves are classified; regimes are disaggregated into simple dimensions, which are then divided into components. The reader may be encouraged by the authors' use of tables, without which the first few chapters would be extremely confusing. Having provided a framework for comparison, the authors then describe nine specific risk regulation regimes, including attacks by dangerous dogs outside the home, cancer from emissions of benzene, and adverse health effects from exposure to pesticide residues in food and in drinking water. In each of the nine examples, the authors address basic points of comparison. For example, is the risk a product of technological developments? How is the risk measured? Is there a common view, or is there controversy over the estimated risk? Is it a risk that has been given close attention by society and/or the media? Who or what creates or contributes to the risk? Which parties take an interest in the methods used for controlling the risk? The authors use the nine examples to illustrate the relationship between varying levels of regulatory control (high to low) and the regime context, defined as the setting in which regulation takes place, such as the different types and levels of risk being tackled, the nature of public preferences and attitudes over risk, and the way the various actors who produce or are affected by the hazard are organized. Then the authors use the same nine examples to show the relationships between the varying degrees of standard-setting, information-gathering and behavior modification activities and the regime content, defined as the policy settings, the configuration of state and other organizations directly engaged in regulating the risk, and the attitudes, beliefs, and operating conventions of the regulators. These comparisons suggest that regimes that are similar in one component, such as information-gathering activities or regulatory aggression, may be different in others. The authors then compare the nine regimes several more times, using less detailed elements of the basic dimensions. …

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 44 citations exist upstream.