Risk Governance: Resisting Excessive Articulation

Abstract

The author selects the following paper as the most influence paper (MIP) in the field of risk governance: van Asselt, M.B.A. and Renn, O. (2011) Risk Governance, Journal of Risk Research, 14(4): 431–449. This article provides a brief overview of the paper and discusses its significance in terms of resisting excessive articulation. One of the key messages of the paper is that non-simple risks should not be treated in the same way as simple risks. Whereas the conventional framework of risk assessment and management has sought to manage intractable risks by making them calculatable and dealing with their incertitude only inside some limited expert communities, risk governance highlights the need for addressing squarely their complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity, and thus opening them up for broader actors. Risk governance can be understood as an intellectual movement toward integrating prudently facts with values, analysis with deliberation, science with politics, while acknowledging a certain role of articulating them.