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Abstract The term governance describes the multitude of actors and processes that lead to collectively binding decisions. The term risk governance translates the core principles of governance to the context of risk-related policy making. We aim to delineate some basic lessons from the insights of the other articles in this special issue for our understanding of risk governance. Risk governance provides a conceptual as well as normative basis for how to cope with uncertain, complex and/or ambiguous risks. We propose to synthesize the breadth of the articles in this special issue by suggesting some changes to the risk governance framework proposed by the International Risk Governance Council (IRGC) and adding some insights to its analytical and normative implications.
Keywords Ambiguity * Communication * Complexity * Risk governance * Science-policy interface * Uncertainty
INTRODUCTION
Risk governance denotes both the institutional structure and the policy process that guide and restrain collective activities of a group, society or international community to regulate, reduce or control risk problems. The contemporary handling of collectively relevant risk problems has been shifted from traditional state-centric approaches with hierarchically organized governmental agencies as the dominant locus of power to multi-level governance systems, in which the political authority for handling risk problems is distributed to separately constituted public bodies (cf. Rosenau 1992; Lidskog 2008; Lidskog et al. 2011). These bodies are characterized by overlapping jurisdictions that do not match the traditional hierarchical order (cf. Skelcher 2005) and multi-actor alliances that include traditional governmental actors such as the executive, legislative and judicial branch, but also socially relevant actors from civil society, most notably industry, science and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This implicates an increasingly multilayered and diversified socio-political landscape in which a multitude of actors, their perceptions and evaluations draw on a diversity of knowledge and evidence claims, value commitments and political interests in order to influence processes of risk analysis, decision-making, and risk management (Irwin 2008).
Institutional diversity can offer considerable advantages when complex, uncertain and ambiguous risk problems need to be addressed because, first, risk problems with different scopes can be managed at different levels, second, an inherent degree of overlap and redundancy makes nonhierarchical adaptive and integrative risk governance systems more resilient and therefore less vulnerable, and third, the larger number of...