From the ‘Neurotic’ to the ‘Rationalising’ State: Risk and the Limits of Governance

Henry Rothstein, Olivier Borraz and Michael Huber

Chapter 12 in Forecasting, Warning and Responding to Transnational Risks, 2011, pp 187-207 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract During New Labour’s third term in office in the UK, risk-based regulation and management came to form a major plank of public policy. In 2005, the then Prime Minister Tony Blair argued in a well-publicised speech that there was enormous pressure on decision-makers ‘to act to eliminate risk in a way that is out of all proportion to the potential damage’ and called for a ‘sensible debate about risk in public policymaking’ (Blair, 2005). ‘Something is seriously awry’, he argued, where ‘…health and safety rules across a range of areas is taken to extremes’, and when the Financial Services Authority is ‘seen as hugely inhibiting of efficient business by perfectly respectable companies that have never defrauded anyone’. Arguing that we need to ‘replace the compensation culture with a common-sense culture’, the prime minister committed the government to ensuring regulatory action is ‘risk based’ to help ensure that creativity in the private and public sectors is not stifled by overly risk-averse cultures.

Keywords: World Trade Organisation; Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy; Acceptable Risk; Policy Domain; Risk Governance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-31691-1_12

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230316911

DOI: 10.1057/9780230316911_12

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().