Taming chance: Risk and the quantification of uncertainty

The quantification of uncertainty through probability is central to definitions of risk used in environmental policy analysis. This essay explores the translation of unquantified uncertainty into probability and the expression of allied philosophical problems in the practice of environmental risk and decision analysis. First we look at means used in science for handling uncertainty associated with some major risks and which are not well represented through probability. Saving the science without quantified probability is addressed through the role of probabilistic events in risk analysis, suggesting the need to expand the scope of risk analysis to include some types of unquantified reasoning about adverse events. Next we look at uses of subjective probability and decision analysis to overcome problems of unquantified uncertainty in science, where we argue that a constructive conception of probability judgments, based in the foundations of decision analysis, provides the most useful approach for such methods. A theme throughout is the role of intellectual control implicit in our efforts to tame change through the representation of uncertainty through probability.     

Agenda Setting in Emergent R&D Policy Subsystems: Examining Discourse Effects of the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act

The literature on government responsiveness to societal issues is extensive but provides a mixed assessment of effectiveness. We examine this issue in the case of policy addressing effective and safe management of research and development in the emerging field of nanotechnology. Specifically, we examine the agenda setting effects of the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act (the Act), a piece of legislation designed to be implemented by a network of actors in the nanotechnology research and development policy subsystem. We adopt a public values lens in our examination of discourse related to societal concerns. Policy documents from Congress, an agency, and federal funding recipients are examined. Findings suggest a narrowing of public values discourse around more specific societal concerns in the documents crafted after the Act was passed.     

The Politics of Immigration and Public Health

The Conservative party's recent proposal to introduce compulsory medical examinations for immigrants should it win the upcoming election marks a departure in the politics of immigration and public health. For many years, the public health impact of immigration was kept out of party competition and successive governments pursued a voluntaristic approach to health checks. In this article, I outline the political history of immigration and public health, and consider the implications of attempts to raise the subject onto the public agenda. I argue that recent developments militate against a calm and balanced approach to the genuine public health concerns associated with immigration, which threatens not only to stigmatise immigrants and stoke anti-immigrant popular opinion, but also prevent the development of effective policies. In particular, the introduction of compulsory examinations may create perverse incentives for migrants to circumvent legal channels and thereby actually increase public health risks.     

An interactive model of attitude and risk/benefit formation regarding social issues

Decision analysis has become an increasingly useful tool for aiding decisionmakers in dealing with complex public and private sector decisions involving multiple objectives and uncertainty. An outgrowth of this discipline is Risk Assessment, which in part concerns how citizen attitudes, risks, and benefits regarding social issues evolve. It is hypothesized that such attitudes and beliefs are determined interactively. A general simultaneous equation model is developed consistent with this hypothesis. A hybrid estimation model and the technique of ridge regression combined with two stage least squares are developed to estimate the model's parameters and tested using data from a psychometric survey of citizen attitudes and beliefs regarding contemporary socially sensitive issues. The results verify the validity of the model and technique. The utility of this model for the policy making process as well as future theoretical and applied research are discussed.     

Depleted Uranium,Public Science,and the Politics of Closure

The public controversy over depleted uranium (DU) seems to follow a standard trajectory—scientific closure, via the reduction of scientific uncertainty, led directly to policy closure, as government bureaucracies increasingly downplayed its dangers and denied redress to exposed individuals. Closer inspection, however, reveals a more complex dynamic. A series of expert, public science reports, while articulating a shared narrative of DU safety, actually accentuated great uncertainty concerning DU's biological effects, mirroring new uncertainties raised by ongoing scientific research. Policy closure is thus mirrored in neither the scholarly scientific literature nor in broader political realms, suggesting a close and unique relation between the expert reports and governmental policy making. Public science institutions and the expert reports they produce are crucial political resources for resolving governmental policy making but are decidedly less successful at closing the broader political debate.     

A decision analytic model to guide early‐stage government regulatory action: Applications for synthetic biology

Synthetic biology (SB) involves the alteration of living cells and biomolecules for specific purposes. Products developed using these approaches could have significant societal benefits, but also pose uncertain risks to human and environmental health. Policymakers currently face decisions regarding how stringently to regulate and monitor various SB applications. This is a complex task, in which policymakers must balance uncertain economic, political, social, and health‐related decision factors associated with SB use. We argue that formal decision analytical tools could serve as a method to integrate available evidence‐based information and expert judgment on the impacts associated with SB innovations, synthesize that information into quantitative indicators, and serve as the first step toward guiding governance of these emerging technologies. For this paper, we apply multi‐criteria decision analysis to a specific case of SB, a micro‐robot based on biological cells called “cyberplasm.” We use data from a Delphi study to assess cyberplasm governance options and demonstrate how such decision tools may be used for assessments of SB oversight.     

Public Administration, Science, and Risk Assessment: A Case Study of the U.K. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy Crisis

The bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) outbreak in the United Kingdom is regarded as one of the worst public policy crises the British government has experienced during the postwar era. In material terms, it has led to the slaughter of 3.3 million cattle and estimated economic losses of £3.7 billion. In administrative terms, the crisis brought about the dissolution of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. This article examines the istitutional context in which decisions about the scientific evidence on BSE were made. The authors argue that a centralized system in which government agencies control science for government is inherently vulnerable to alliances of experts and interest groups that undermine the credible assessment of public health and safety risks. Specific societal conditions may encourage risk-opportunistic behavior among policy makers that is conducive to delays and inaction until such time as the evidence of a health risk becomes overwhelming.     

Performance health administration and the return of the French second empire

In the French health care system, cost-containment strategies have become the new priority. Novel instrumental values (e.g., benchmarking, incentivization or premiums, and Diagnostic-Related Groups) and reforms of the hospital governance via the 2009 HPST Act served an austerity agenda at the expense of more patient-centered approaches (e.g., patient choice and case management). Effecting actual changes proved more difficult than collecting data on the health system. Decision-making powers are increasingly concentrated within the welfare elite at the expense of the medical profession. Hence, a return to the earlier French tradition of Jacobinism. Transparency has yet to be achieved.     

主题、类型和规范:国内政治学研究的状况分析--以近十年复印报刊资料《政治学》中的论文为对象

目前，政治学研究的主体队伍在高等院校，研究的领域以政治理论为主，多侧重于规范性研究。经验研究由于本身水准的制约，使之尚难以上升至本科学专业刊物的主流位置。值得重视的问题还在于：不管是经验研究，还是规范研究。其规范性程度均有待大力提高。相当部分论文既缺少必要的“文献评论”，也不作任何“文献引证”；既缺失“问题意识”，更不能提出自身的理论假设。不过，近年间《政治学》论文规范性程度的大步提升，或许既显示了主流专业学术刊物对学术规范的重视，也预示了本学科研究中业已出现的值得鼓舞和追求的努力。     

Managing Nanotechnology Risks in Vulnerable Populations: A Case for Gender Diversity

Funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN), this study asks qualitatively analyzes interviews with 48 nanoscientist users at four NNIN facilities. The main research questions were: (1) Do nanotechnologies pose unique social and ethical concerns?; (2) how are the risks associated with nanotechnology distributed among different human populations?; (3) what are specific policy steps that can be used to manage such risks? This study purposefully oversampled female scientists to correct for the historical underrepresentation of women in the nanotechnology workforce. By amplifying the voice of this science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce minority, the policy discussion contained herein better reflects the concerns of the general population. The results, analyzed with the aid of qualitative data analysis software, yield interesting differences in risk characterization among the scientists and innovative policy suggestions for the nanoscience community and regulators alike.     

The unloved relationship? Dynamic capabilities and political‐market strategy: a research agenda

• In this developmental article, the authors outline a five‐stage system to classify levels of relationship engagement (LRE) between firms and government actors when developing their political‐market strategies (PMS) as part of a wider stakeholder management programme. In an attempt to develop the research agenda in this increasingly important area, the authors propose a set of hypotheses to drive forward the research agenda. Overall, we argue that firms can develop PMS into a dynamic capability but further research is needed to determine whether or not the capability developed is first or second order (i.e. contributing to other sources of competitive advantage).

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Parties, media, the public and the economy: Patterns of societal agenda-setting

Abstract. The aim of this study is to assess the relative strength of the reciprocal causal relationships between the political agenda (the party agenda), the mass media agenda and the public agenda. Although the research literature is rather confusing and inconclusive, three causal patterns have often been suggested. The economic theory of representative democracy ('public choice' theory) assumes bottom-up agenda-setting. The political agenda is assumed to respond to the public agenda. However, theories on political communication suggest top-down agenda-setting. The political agenda would set the media agenda, which in turn would set the public agenda. The central tenet of mediacracy theory is the proposition that the media agenda sets both the public agenda and the political agenda. This article uses data on economic issues in the Netherlands in the period 1980–1986 and linear structural equations models to test these three causal patterns. The results warrant both bottom-up and top-down agenda-setting, but the mediacracy model is rejected. The conclusion should be that the economic theory of democracy, which prevails in the political science journals, has to incorporate findings from political communication research.     

The sun safety metanarrative: Translating science into public health discourse

A case study examining the relationship between ozone depletion, UV radiation and skin cancer shows how scientific uncertainty is reduced and, through consensus building, translated into certainty in public health messages. Using narrative analysis we examine Canadian consensus statements on the dangers of UV and reconstruct the supporting logical claims and scientific evidence. Though considerable uncertainty remains about the relationship between the environment and skin cancer, both public health messages and the UV-Index formalize uncertainty and risk; concern then shifts from the less-certain, scientific realm into the apparently more-certain arena of public health messages. In this process the distinctions between science and policy become blurred. The case can be interpreted in two ways: as the result of various players acting in their self-interests or as a moral drama based on the importance of simple, clear messages to allow correct actions.     

Political Attention and Public Policy: A Study of How Agenda Setting Matters

Political science research on agenda setting has been focused on how and why political agendas change over time. This article addresses the different but equally important question about how agenda setting actually matters to the policy outputs of national policy making. Do changes in the political agenda foreshadow changes in public policies? And does the effect of changes in the political agenda depend upon the policy preferences expressed by the mass public? Integrating research on policy agendas with well‐established ideas about re‐election‐oriented representation, this article offers a new approach to the study of such agenda effects. Furthermore, it demonstrates the empirical validity of this approach using a Danish dataset of public opinion, public policy and the national political agenda spanning a quarter of a century and covering several different issues.     

A theory of risk colonization: The spiralling regulatory logics of societal and institutional risk

Abstract

Explanations of the growing importance of risk to regulation identify three processes; the need to respond to newly created and discovered risks; the growth of regulatory frameworks; and the use of the risk instrument as an organizing idea for decision-making in modernity. Synthesizing these explanations, we propose a theory of risk colonization. We introduce a distinction between societal and institutional risks, the former referring to threats to members of society and their environment, and the latter referring to threats to regulatory organizations and/or the legitimacy of rules and methods of regulation. We argue that pressures towards greater coherence, transparency, and accountability of the regulation of societal risks can create institutional risks by exposing the inevitable limitations of regulation. In the first stage of risk colonization, framing the objects of regulation as ‘risks’ serves as a useful instrument for reflexively managing the associated institutional threats. This can be followed, in a second stage, by a dynamic tension between the management of societal and institutional risks that results in spiralling feedback loops. The very process of regulating societal risks gives rise to institutional risks, the management of which sensitizes regulators to take account of societal risks in different ways. We discuss links between this theory and the concept of governmentality and conclude with some speculations about the possible positive and negative consequences of risk colonization.     

Public Engagement for Informing Science and Technology Policy: What Do We Know,What Do We Need to Know,and How Will We Get There?

This article examines social science relevant to public engagements and identifies the challenges to the goal of meaningful public input into science and technology policy. Specifically, when considering “which forms, features, and conditions of public engagement are optimal for what purposes, and why?” we find social science has not clarified matters. We offer a model to guide systematic research that defines and empirically connects variations in features and types of public engagement activities to specifically defined variations in effective processes and outcomes. The specification of models, as we have done, will guide policy makers, practitioners, and the public in determining what kinds of engagement techniques are optimal for what kinds of purposes. Our model is presented to start conversations and inspire research that in the future should help to ensure meaningful public participation that meets the promise of contributing thoughtful societal values and perspectives into governmental policies impacting science and technology research.     

Staging Science: Authoritativeness and Fragility of Models and Measurement in the COVID-19 Crisis

In the COVID-19 crisis, society pins its hopes on science to play an authoritative role in reducing uncertainty and ambiguity. But is science up to the task? This is far from self-evident. The demands on science in times of crisis run counter to the values of good, normal science. Crisis science needs to be fast, univocal, personalized, and direct, while normal science is slow, contentious, collective, and sensitive to complexity. Science can only play its atypical role if it is staged in the public arena. Some patterns of staging stand out: personalization, visualization, and connection to lived experiences. So far, the staging of science has been successful, but it is fragile. The COVID-19 crisis shows the potential of well-staged forms of alliance between science and policy, but when the general assumption is that scientists will “solve” societal “problems,” the staging of science has gone too far.     

Organizing for Crisis Management: Building Governance Capacity and Legitimacy

What makes a well‐functioning governmental crisis management system, and how can this be studied using an organization theory–based approach? A core argument is that such a system needs both governance capacity and governance legitimacy. Organizational arrangements as well as the legitimacy of government authorities will affect crisis management performance. A central argument is that both structural features and cultural context matter, as does the nature of the crisis. Is it a transboundary crisis? How unique is it, and how much uncertainty is associated with it? The arguments are substantiated with empirical examples and supported by a literature synthesis, focusing on public administration research. A main conclusion is that there is no optimal formula for harmonizing competing interests and tensions or for overcoming uncertainty and ambiguous government structures. Flexibility and adaptation are key assets, which are constrained by the political, administrative, and situational context. Furthermore, a future research agenda is indicated.     

Counting on codes: An examination of transnational codes as a regulatory governance mechanism for nanotechnologies

This article examines the rise of nanotechnology‐specific codes of conduct (nano‐codes) as a private governance mechanism to manage potential risks and promote the technology. It examines their effectiveness as well as their legitimacy as regulatory instruments in the public domain. The study first maps the rise of voluntary nano‐codes and the roles played by different actors. Focusing on five specific nano‐codes, the article then discusses their adequacy in terms of scientific uncertainty, gaps in existing regulatory regimes, and broader societal concerns. It concludes that these voluntary nano‐codes have weaknesses including a lack of explicit standards on which to base independent monitoring, as well as no sanctions for poor compliance. At the same time it also highlights the potential power of these governance mechanisms under conditions of uncertainty and co‐regulation with government. It is likely that nano‐codes will become the “first cut” of a new governance regime for nanotechnologies.     

Conducting Research on Counties in the 21st Century: A New Agenda and Database Considerations

Given local, regional, national, and global events of the last few years and the ever-increasing service roles and expectations of county governments, American counties warrant greater scholarly attention. To guide researchers, the research agenda published in this journal 15 years ago has been refined and expanded. This 11-point agenda includes fiscal capacity and responsibility; the role of structure, politics, and political participation; intergovernmental relations and networking; professionalism; service delivery; environmental issues; population changes; managing conflict and promoting integration; terrorism and security; information technology; and economic development. In addition, five database concerns and needs that pose significant challenges to researchers are identified and presented for consideration.