01Oct 2011
Special issue, Journal of Risk Research(vol. 14, Issue 8, 2011
23:44 - By Hal Colebatch
The papers of the Special Issue critically examine various issues that concern policy-makers and scholars with a view to opening up the governance of health and environmental risks for the benefit of the general public - e.g. forms and processes that were adopted, factors contributing to unsuccessful implementation given existing (political or sectoral) institutional settings, and unintended consequences that compromised the goals of greater democracy, participation and empowerment.
Overall, the Special Issue points to limitations of one-size-fits-all approaches for governing risk and uncertainty in liberal democracies even in the 'world risk society', and calls for future research with a more rigorous comparative approach to investigating the iterative dynamic process i.e. how individuals and collective bodies learn lessons from various challenges and respond to feedback from society.
The issue features five original research papers and four commentaries contributed by international scholars and practitioners, in addition to an extensive introductory editorial. We hope you will find the issue interesting.
Table of Contents
Towards democratic governance of uncertainty? Contesting notions of participation, control and accountability. Fabrizio CANTELLI, Naonori KODATE & Kristian KRIEGER pages 919-932
Standards for risk assessment of standards: how the international community is starting to address the risk of the wrong standards. Donald MCRAE pages 933-942
Comment on Donald Macrae: 'Standards for risk assessment of standards'. Robert BALDWIN pages 943-945
Commentary on Donald Macrae: Regulatory impact assessment: a panacea to over-regulation? Claire A. DUNLOP pages 947-950
Risks, alternative knowledge strategies and democratic legitimacy: the conflict over co-incineration of hazardous industrial waste in Portugal. Helena MATEUS JERONIMO & José Luís GARCIA pages 951-967
From risk to the government of uncertainty: the case of mobile telephony. Olivier BORRAZ pages 969-982
Risk, democracy and schizophrenia: the changing roles of citizens in risk policy-making putting GMO policy to the test. Nathalie SCHIFFINO & Steve JACOB pages 983-993
Change and commitment: beyond risk and responsibility. Silvio FUNTOWICZ & Roger STRAND pages 995-1003
Even beyond humanity - a comment on 'Change and commitment: beyond risk and responsibility' by Silvio Funtowicz and Roger Strand. Hervé CORVELLEC pages 1005-1007
Risk and responsibility: rejoinder to the paper by Silvio Funtowicz and Roger Strand. D. Warner NORTH pages 1009-1015