LIT 2 - Klinke/Rehn: the coming age of risk governance Flashcards
Klinke/Rehn: What is the core idea behind risk governance?
Risk governance is an advanced way of handling risk that goes beyond traditional risk analysis (assessment, management, communication) by focusing on the processes and institutions that guide, restrain, and integrate collective activities of handling risk. It emphasises the interplay between risk evaluation and risk management.
Klinke/Rehn: How does the concept of governance, in general, relate to risk governance?
Governance refers to the structures and processes through which society and the economy are steered towards collectively negotiated objectives. Risk governance specifically applies this to risks, referring to the complex sociopolitical processes, structures, and institutions that provide collectively binding agreements on identifying, framing, assessing, evaluating, managing, and communicating risks.
Klinke/Rehn: What are some key characteristics of risk governance?
Key characteristics include a new concept of differentiated responsibility and deliberation that integrates expertise, experience, and tacit knowledge for legitimate political risk decision making. It is also seen as an integrative and adaptive concept with recurrent and iterative aspects.
Klinke/Rehn: Why did the concept of risk governance emerge?
Risk governance emerged due to the shortcomings of classical risk analysis and its implications for governing risk. Traditional approaches often focused solely on objective, technical properties of hazards and were seen as increasingly unfit to resolve complex risk problems, as highlighted by various risk regulation failures.
Klinke/Rehn: How does risk governance expand upon the traditional risk analysis approach?
Risk governance includes the components of classical risk analysis but integrates them into a more comprehensive, adaptive, and socially sensitive process. It adds elements like concern assessment, risk characterisation, and evaluation to ensure the integrity and effectiveness of governing risk and to integrate technical and social aspects.
Klinke/Rehn: What is risk characterisation, and why is it important in risk governance?
Risk characterisation involves understanding risks beyond just probability and impact. The German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) developed criteria such as extent of damage, probability of occurrence, incertitude, ubiquity, persistency, delay effect, and social mobilisation potential to achieve this. This broader characterisation is important for making justified trade-offs in risk evaluation.
Klinke/Rehn: Explain the ‘traffic light model’ in risk evaluation.
The traffic light model ranks risks based on a combination of probability and impact, categorising them into acceptable, tolerable, and intolerable zones. Acceptable risks require no further formal regulation, tolerable risks may require risk reduction measures despite potential benefits, and intolerable risks are deemed unacceptable due to likely catastrophic impacts outweighing benefits.
Klinke/Rehn: What is the ‘five plus one’ framework of risk governance architecture?
The ‘five plus one’ framework includes: pre-estimation, interdisciplinary estimation (technical and nontechnical assessment), characterisation and evaluation, management, and monitoring and control. Communication, deliberation, and stakeholder involvement constantly accompany this cyclical process.
Klinke/Rehn: What are the three pillars of distributed and differentiated deliberation in postnormal risk governance?
The three pillars are: Epistemic deliberation (deliberation among experts for epistemological justification of risk assessments), Associational deliberation (deliberation of societal stakeholder groups to consider societal acceptability and tolerability of risks), and Public deliberation (deliberation of citizens to influence risk decision making and set sociopolitical goals).
Klinke/Rehn: What is the role of epistemic communities in risk governance?
Epistemic communities, consisting of experts with issue-specific knowledge, are responsible for producing substantial cognitive and evaluative knowledge about risks and uncertainties through expert deliberation. They aim to facilitate convergence and agreement on cognitive and evaluative understandings.
Klinke/Rehn: What is the purpose of associational deliberation involving stakeholders?
Associational deliberation fosters the interplay between scientific expertise and societal stakeholder experience. It aims to determine the societal acceptability and tolerability of the ontological and ethical consequences of risk and to find a balance in precaution levels.
Klinke/Rehn: How does public deliberation contribute to risk governance?
Public deliberation involves the general public in sharing sovereignty over risk decisions through discussions and influencing policy framing. Mini-publics, like citizen juries, allow citizens to consider expert and stakeholder input and articulate recommendations. This can strengthen trust in risk governance.
Klinke/Rehn: What are the key differences highlighting the shift from traditional risk management to risk governance?
The shift from risk management to risk governance represents a move from a more linear, often state-centric and techno-scientific approach to a more integrative, adaptive, and sociopolitically aware way of handling risk. Traditional risk management often focused on risk assessment leading directly to management. Risk governance, however, expands upon this by including:
* A critique and expansion of traditional risk analysis.
* A focus on the processes and institutions that guide, restrain, and integrate collective activities of handling risk.
* The recognition that risks are shaped by social processes, perceptions, and values.
* The need to address complex, uncertain, and ambiguous risks more effectively and democratically.
Klinke/Rehn: In broad terms, what does risk governance entail?
Risk governance entails institutional structures and sociopolitical processes that guide and restrain collective activities to influence or direct the course of events or people’s behaviour when dealing with risk issues. It refers to complex sociopolitical processes, structures, and institutions that provide collectively binding agreements on the processes for identifying, framing, assessing, evaluating, managing, and communicating risks. Key aspects include:
* The interplay of risk evaluation and risk management.
* The integration of technical expertise, experience, and tacit knowledge.
* An emphasis on differentiated responsibility and deliberation.
* Being integrative and adaptive with recurrent and iterative aspects.
* Addressing complex causal relationships, uncertainty, and ambiguity.
* A focus on risk characterisation and evaluation as central to legitimate risk decision making.
* The involvement of diverse actors, including state agencies, industry, NGOs, and the affected public.
Klinke/Rehn: How does the shift to risk governance alter the understanding of the risk concept and shape the risk governance architecture?
The shift to risk governance has significant implications:
* For the Risk Concept: It moves away from a purely techno-scientific paradigm where risk is solely a matter of quantifiable probability and impact. Instead, risk is understood as a product of social processes, where technical properties are combined with social process variables such as controllability, equity, economic performance, and civil liberties. The concept of risk expands to include considerations of social concerns, values, and the broader context.
* For the Risk Governance Architecture: It necessitates a more comprehensive and dynamic framework than the traditional linear model, leading to the development of a ‘five plus one’ framework: pre-estimation, interdisciplinary estimation, characterisation and evaluation, management, monitoring and control, all supported by communication, deliberation, and stakeholder involvement. This architecture is envisioned as a circular and iterative process that is analytical and normative, with diagnostic and predictive value.
