This work offers a defense of risk regulation in the U.S. against a rising chorus of critiques from neo-realists who tout cost-benefit approaches as the best way to balance the wide array of interests and stakeholders in regulation of risk industries and polluters. While the focus is nearly entirely on legal aspects of risk regulation, the authors do attempt to ground their approach in pragmatic principles. Pragmatic critique is used as both a partial foundational philosophy for risk regulation and a methodological basis for a series of reforms of risk regulation. The approach of the book is to counter claims that have been brought against risk regulation by some economists and conservative think tanks of its being 'irrational,' in that such regulations often impose solutions to risks that end up being quite costly.The main arguments of the book are set out in recursive fashion, beginning in Chapter 2 with a brief overview of pragmatism and how it relates to risk regulation. Chapter 3 outlines some of the key terms of current risk regulation (e.g. statutory standards and risk thresholds) and how they work in practice, arguing that the U.S. Congress has rightly rejected cost-benefit approaches. Chapter 4 outlines the link between pragmatism and the current approaches, showing how pragmatism is more attuned to the multidisciplinary nature of risk and decision-making involving risk. Chapter 5 introduces some of the key critics of risk regulation and their arguments and flaws while Chapter 6 analyzes the different valuation methods that are used, undermining some of the critics' claims about risk as being limited by various factors that extend beyond simple utilitarian reduction of risks to costs and benefits. Chapter 7 focuses on regulatory impact analysis arguing for qualitative data to be included along with quantitative. Chapter 8 proposes incremental decision-making to overcome the problems of over-regulation and the excessive time that it takes to implement a complete and comprehensive regulatory scheme, while Chapter 9 addresses the different functions of the executive, judiciary, and legislative branches of government and how to make them act in concert and not against the "relative competence of … agency decision-makers" (p.206).While the amount of material covered is quite impressive, the argument setting out the pragmatic basis for risk regulation I found to be somewhat thin. The bulk of this discussion is laid out in Chapter 2, but is occasionally referenced in later chapters. While John Dewey is cited several times, this is done entirely on the basis on secondary sources. It becomes clear that the point of the chapter is to briefly lay out a framework which will allow the authors to argue that, in the context of American political discourse, the pragmatic tradition, taking into account 'bounded rationality,' is the most suitable for reaching optimal results. Further, such pragmatic-based policies can always be adjusted, "on the back end" as they put it, in light of new data or evidence that shows that th...
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