The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

Risk analysis can usefully be applied to potential health and safety risks from technology and pollution. We examine historical examples of how knowledge about risk is developed, discussing the capabilities as well as the limitations of analyses to identify potential risks, establish causes, and estimate the probability that harmful effects will occur. One speaks of “risk” because, in any particular instance, an adverse outcome may or may not occur; causative factors skew the probabilities of different outcomes. Accordingly, the detection and measurement of risk must be derived from samples of instances. Real-world observations of risk may be supplemented with controlled experiments, and risks of interest must often be estimated indirectly through extrapolation from analogous circumstances. The ensuing uncertainty affects the clarity of ranking risks against one another and limits the usefulness of risk analysis alone as a means of resolving social conflicts about risk.

This article argues that risk assessment, supposedly the scientific component of risk regulation (as opposed to risk management, the policy component), cannot be very scientific because too little is known. Without firm scientific knowledge, risk assessment must rely on conventions promulgated by bureaucrats or on the professional judgments of scientific experts; such conventions and judgments reflect not only scientific knowledge but also policy judgments and cultural values. The inadequacy of scientific knowledge, coupled with the lack of public trust in government and in experts, suggests that risk regulators should be concerned not only with creating institutional arrangements likely to foster trust but also with creating mechanisms for providing concerned individuals with credible reassurance. The article concludes by discussing divergences between public perceptions and expert perceptions of risks, and the weights that a democratic society should give to each in assessing and managing risks.

In this article, a notion of scientific uncertainty is sketched that is in many ways different from the prevailing view. Scientific uncertainty is not simply an objective value that can be reduced by science alone. Rather, scientific uncertainty is constructed both by science and by society in order to serve certain purposes. Recognizing the social role of scientific uncertainty will help us to see how many of our problems about risk are deeply cultural and cannot be overcome simply by the application of more and better science.

Scientists have made remarkable progress in dealing with technical challenges but not in dealing with society. Given that public concerns have grown, in the face of declining “real” risks, the common if simplistic tendency has been to blame public ignorance or irrationality and to argue that policy decisions should be based on quantitative risk estimates, effectively ignoring public concerns. Such assertions are superficially plausible, but they reflect fundamental misunderstandings of the nature of technological societies, as well as of the reasons behind declining scientific credibility and of actual strengths and weaknesses of risk assessment. Scientific credibility has been undermined not so much by shadowy enemies as by actions of self-proclaimed friends, and there are inherent limitations to the practical usefulness of risk assessment in policy disputes. If proposals for risk-based decision making were actually implemented, they could well lead not to increased credibility for specific technologies but to self-reinforcing losses of credibility for science and technology as a whole.

Increasing awareness of exposure to environmental risks has focused attention on measures that would give greater assurance that such risks are effectively managed and that the adverse consequences of risky activities are mitigated. Implementing such actions is made more difficult by the uncertainties of environmental changes, their often delayed impacts, the great importance attached to extremely small risks, and the lack of clear measures of the values of environmental losses. Findings from recent behavioral studies of people's time preferences, valuations of losses relative to gains, and risk perceptions are providing information that should lead to more effective risk management strategies.

This article is concerned with the nature of what federal legislation calls “the human environment” as a preliminary to understanding impacts upon it and risks to it. After discussing the features that distinguish human systems from others, emphasizing nonmetrical aspects of their sociocultural characteristics, eighteen points concerning risks and impacts are made. The article concludes with a discussion of the possible place in the human environment of what Stephen Toulmin calls “post-modern science and risk analysis.”

Risk research is a complex social enterprise, reflecting the beliefs and values of those closest to its creation. For public values to be expressed in risk research, the public needs the same access as those who conduct and directly sponsor that research. Providing that access requires more open research management and more responsive research methods.

Effective communication between interested parties is widely held to be a vital element in health and environmental risk management decision making. There have been three phases in the evolution of risk communication during the last twenty years. Phase I emphasized risk: in a modern industrial economy, we must have the capacity to manage risks at a very exacting level of detail. Phase II stresses communication: statements about risk situations are best regarded as acts of persuasive communication, that is, as messages intended to persuade a listener of the correctness of a point of view. Now, in Phase III, public and private sector institutions increasingly are recognizing their responsibility to deal adequately with both dimensions and to carry out sound risk communication as a matter of good business practice.

Risk is a complex phenomenon that involves both biophysical attributes and social dimensions. Existing assessment and management approaches often fail to consider risk in its full complexity and its social context. The concept of the social amplification and attenuation of risk provides an approach that recognizes that how social institutions and structures process a risk will shape greatly its effects upon society and the responses of management institutions and people. Examples of both amplification and attenuation are provided from recent risk experience.

Risk information can alter risk judgments and promote sound risk decisions. Hazard warnings are critical in providing such information. Both right-to-know and duty-to-warn obligations reflect this. Evidence suggests that warnings can significantly affect risk-taking decisions, but care is needed in interpreting whether their influence leads to successful outcomes. Hazard warnings must accommodate individuals' cognitive limitations. Salient problems include recipients who suffer information overload or are unable to grasp adequately the level of risk communicated.

In the context of health, safety, and environmental decisions, the concept of risk involves value judgments that reflect much more than just the probability and consequences of the occurrence of an event. This article conceptualizes risk as a game, in which the rules must be socially negotiated within the context of a specific problem. This contextualist view of risk provides insight into why technical approaches to risk management often fail with problems such as those involving radiation and chemicals, where scientific experts and the public disagree on the nature of the risks. It also highlights the need for the interested parties to define and play the game, thus emphasizing the importance of institutional, procedural, and societal processes in risk management decisions. This contextualist approach is illustrated using the problem of siting hazardous waste facilities.

Values, meaning what we care to achieve, are essential to risk management. Understanding the relevant values is critical to making good decisions about risks. Thus values should be made explicit. Conceptual ideas and a few practical suggestions for building value models are discussed. Brief descriptions of several cases in which such models have facilitated decision making about important risk management decisions conclude the article.

This article examines recent debates about guiding principles and implementation of risk management in the federal government. Considering influences from both political and scientific arenas, the article will highlight how changing perspectives about science, regulatory objectives, and decision models are fostering significant innovations in the conduct of risk management by federal agencies. The first part of the article summarizes several explicit signals of rethinking the federal approach to risk management at the administrative and congressional levels. The second part considers particular intellectual shifts in our understanding of risk management that are fueling contemporary debates on the science, objectives, and process. Specific agency examples are used to illustrate recent suggestions for or experience with implementing innovations for federal risk management. The article concludes with some thoughts about the future of the federal role in risk management and risk policy more generally.

Market processes play a central and constructive role in allocating risks, but impediments such as inaccurately perceived risks and externalities create a potential role for government intervention. Individuals overestimate small risks, are averse to imprecisely understood risks, and give excessive weight to errors of commission over errors of omission. The challenge for the government is to strike an appropriate balance in its risk regulation efforts and to avoid institutionalizing common irrational responses to risk. Excessive expenditures on risk reduction, often undertaken by or required by government, not only squander resources but also may increase risks to us all; they can divert expenditures that could have been used to enhance our standard of living and, directly or indirectly, our health. Risk equity concerns often prove problematic: they may direct excessive attention to unimportant risks and hinder efforts to deploy resources to produce the greatest gains in societal health status.

In recent years, environmental justice advocates have made a convincing claim that risky facilities have been disproportionately clustered in poor communities and communities of color. NIMBYism (not in my backyard) has spread from predominantly white, affluent suburbs to poorer communities of color. In this article, we propose a means of addressing environmental inequities and breaking the siting impasse. We think that poor communities of color might use the proposed siting of risky facilities as a basis for negotiating substantial improvements in the well-being of their communities. We propose to embed siting negotiations in the preparation of broader development packages, jointly created with citizens of poor neighborhoods and communities of color, so that health risks are reduced, the environment is improved, and all residents are better off. As far as justice is concerned, the perceived fairness of the process by which risks are communicated and selected, and risk management strategies are devised, is as important as the actual allocation of risk.

A commonly observed characteristic of risk regulation policy is the absence of coherent prioritization of risks and inconsistencies in the stringency of controls on risks that are regulated. The purpose of this article is to examine the roots of this problem in the way both citizens and their elected representatives deal with uncertainties associated with catastrophic risks, why elected politicians respond to this problem in constructing regulatory institutions that are prone to inconsistency, and whether various proposals to reform the regulatory process would be likely to improve its performance. The main conclusions are that most reform proposals are strongly inconsistent with democratic responsiveness, which is the most important principle that elected officials use in designing programs, and that the only plausible means for making regulatory policy more coherent is to increase the resources of regulatory agencies so as to give them greater control over the public agenda in risk policy.

“Risk” and the “legal system” are ambiguous terms. Here they are clarified, then considered from the standpoint of the objectives, methods, and problems of legal intervention in a world of inevitable risk.