The Government of Risk: Understanding Risk Regulation Regimes

C Hood, H Rothstein and R Baldwin Oxford University Press 186 pp, ISBN: 0-19-924363-8 The Government of Risk is a study of how risk has been regulated across different policy domains, and an analysis of the variation in order to explore the dynamics of risk regulation regimes. This book is carefully structured and edited, with many references and footnotes, to enable the authors to maintain a clear train of thought. For the reader, it requires regular use of the references in order to understand that train of thought. The book provides three useful appendices on recommended reading, a coded list of interviewees for reference, and methodological notes for selected figures and tables. A large list of references and an index are also provided. The book opens with the definition of risk regulation as `governmental interference with market or social processes to control potential adverse consequences to health'. The authors discuss the concern in modern human activity and technology with risks that require special expertise to understand, and go on to examine risk regulation in different regimes. They use the term `regime' to denote the complex of institutional geography, rules, practice, and animating ideas that are associated with the regulation of a particular risk or hazard. Three shapers of risk regulation regimes are identified: market-failure (pressure for government to correct serious failures in markets and/or tort law processes), opinion-responsive (pressure to respond to public opinion), and interest-driven (pressures from organised groups). I take the definition as limiting consideration of regulation to government actions. I presume that consensus standards developed and applied by non-governmental bodies fall in the realm of market-failure mechanisms, whereby government regulation is needed only to correct failure. This seems a serious gap in the consideration of regulatory dynamics. In the US system we have long used consensus standards developed by non-governmental organisations as important elements of regulation. A notable example is the use for more than 100 years of the Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code developed and maintained by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). The authors have examined nine risk regulation regimes in detail. The nine regimes cover so wide a range of risk type and difficulty of measure that they defy rigorous comparison as risks. Four deal with carcinogens: radon in the home, radon in the workplace, ambient benzene, and benzene in the workplace. Two are the risks of pesticide residues in food and in drinking water. The others are the risk of attack by dangerous dogs, the risk of attacks on children by convicted paedophiles released from prison, and injuries or deaths on local roads from motor vehicles. The risks of the carcinogens and the pesticide residues are the only ones that might possibly be harmonised, or assessed and held to a common standard of risk. That has been a goal for some years, but an elusive one. Even in the narrowed field of risk from exposure to ionising radiation, there is not a harmonised set of risk standards. The authors of this book are aware that the standard for radon in the home is not consistent with other standards for limits of exposure. They say in their analysis: `There seem few serious obstacles to the handling of domestic radon risks by an efficiently operating market linked to an effective tort law system.' The risks of exposure to low levels of radiation are not readily discernible in time and causation to enable easy remedy through the tort law system. One need only consider the book review by Richard Wakeford published in the June 2001 issue of this journal (page 203) to appreciate the point. In exploring the dynamics of regulatory regimes, the authors rightly recognise that `...greater transparency is a central and recurring recipe for `better regulation'...'. I believe that the US system has adopted many more formal transparency requirements. Many know of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) that requires publication for comment of the key aspects or factors involved in a major decision, including the alternatives. This is an excellent way to ensure transparency. However, even that is not enough in the view of many in the US, who say that to the bureaucrats it simply means `decide', `announce' and `defend'. I do not hold that view but the challenge brings me to a final point on the analysis in The Government of Risk. Near the end of the book the authors present figure 9.2, a `catherine wheel' approach to institutional blame prevention re-engineering. I take it to represent their depiction of bureaucratic response to external challenge, whether for transparency or any other purpose. I admit my own bias, based on many years service as a government regulator, to look for intellectual integrity in the bureaucracy, and to complain when I don't see it. The closing analyses in this book do not seem to expect intellectual integrity in the bureaucracy, and see only self-serving reactions to pressure. It puzzles me because they seem to recognise that the effort for limits on radon in the home are driven by the bureaucracy itself, rather than public pressure or interest.