From preparedness to risk: from the singular risk of nuclear war to the plurality of all hazards

Abstract

Debates on risk have largely assumed risk to be the outcome of calculative practices. There is a related assumption that risk objects come only in one form, and that the reason not everything can be transformed into a risk is because of the difficulties in calculating and creating universal quantitative comparisons. In this article, building on recent studies of preparedness that have broadened understandings of risk, we provide an analysis of how preparedness measures might themselves produce risk, in particular through risk's durable instantiation, or what we call 'concretization'. Our empirical focus is on how government agencies in two countries shifted their attention from the risk of nuclear attack during the Cold War to an all hazards approach to preparedness. Comparing the mid- to late-twentieth century histories of the UK and Switzerland, we show that both countries shifted from focusing from a single risk to plural risks. This shift cannot be explained by a change in prevailing calculative practices, or by the fact that the risks changed historically. Instead, it is driven by historically specific changes in how risks are produced and reproduced in relation to how materializations of risk operate over time.

Assumptions, uncertainty, and catastrophic/existential risk: National risk assessments need improved methods and stakeholder engagement

“…Incomplete/improper integration of societal values with the risk assessment and/or unclear decision rules (Veland et al, 2013;Vlek, 2013a;Willis, Potoglou, de Bruin, & Hoorens, 2012) Limited debate and expert/stakeholder engagement/authorization/understanding (Bossong & Hegemann, 2016;Government Office for Science, 2012;Hagmann & Cavelty, 2012;Hilton & Baylon, 2020;Hiscock & Jones, 2017;Lin, 2018;Stock & Wentworth, 2019;Vlek, 2013a) Lack of a standard (justified and effective) risk methodology (Brody, 2020;Hagmann & Cavelty, 2012;Mamuji & Etkin, 2019;Stock & Wentworth, 2019) Methodological imprecision/confusion (e.g., around concepts of risk, probability, uncertainty, impact) (Aven, 2020;Veland et al, 2013;Vlek, 2013a) Risk and scenario selection Not all salient risks are included or considered for inclusion (post-hoc inclusion of risks evident) (Blagden, 2018;Deville & Guggenheim, 2018;Raine, 2021) Cognitive biases, groupthink, or institutional inertia obstruct valid assessment (Blagden, 2018;Government Office for Science, 2012;Stock & Wentworth, 2019) Limitations of a single "reasonable worst-case scenario" approach, e.g., omission of decision-relevant information (Bradley & Roussos, 2021;Hilton & Shah, 2021;Stock & Wentworth, 2019) Improper exclusion of uncertain, improbable, emerging, and devastating risks (Etkin, Mamuji, & Clarke, 2018;Government Office for Science, 2012;Hilton & Baylon, 2020;Mamuji & Etkin, 2019) Over focus on risk within borders rather than potentially global consequences (nationalist bias)…”

“…Imprecision and ambiguity of consequence/probability estimates (Blagden, 2018) Spurious accuracy of consequence/probability estimates and/or lack of sensitivity analysis (Government Office for Science, 2012 ;Hagmann & Cavelty, 2012) Insufficient accounting for interactions among risks and cascading effects (isolated hazard rather than integrated systems focus) (Blagden, 2018;Gill & Malamud, 2016;Government Office for Science, 2012;Stock & Wentworth, 2019) Politicization of the risk assessment process and outcomes and/or vested interests (Bossong & Hegemann, 2016;Brody, 2020;Deville & Guggenheim, 2018;Hagmann & Cavelty, 2012) Lack of focus on why things can go wrong and how policy contributes to the risk of things going wrong (Hagmann & Cavelty, 2012) Outputs & validation Risk of false positive and false negative results (Vlek, 2013a(Vlek, , 2013b Lack of, or impossibility of, external validation (Vlek, 2013b;Willis et al, 2012) False equivalence of rare devastating and common negligible risks (Mamuji & Etkin, 2019) Risk assessments not effectively connected to risk management (not solution focused) (Bossong & Hegemann, 2016;Lin, 2018;Raine, 2021) Circularity of scenarios being an outcome of policy choice, but scenarios assumed in choosing policy (Bradley & Roussos, 2021) Revision and updating Lack of methodological process for situation awareness and warning of risks (Raine, 2021) deliberation on risk, (2) the weaknesses and ambiguity of risk matrices for communicating NRAs, (3) a major class of risks often neglected by NRA, and (4) the difficulties that uncertainty poses. We then suggest how those undertaking NRA could enter a productive dialog with stakeholders, supported by an interactive communication and engagement tool, to overcome some of these difficulties.…”

A better foundation for national security? The ethics of national risk assessments in the Nordic region

“…They claim that the political role of NRAs is highly problematic because (1) the NRAs are presented as objective, glossing over the political decisions, limited information and scientific uncertainties that they are based on, and (2) the political nature of the assessments is concealed when stemming from science and expertise rather than from sovereign dictates by governments or consultations with the public. Resonating with debates on general technocratic and depoliticising tendencies in European politics (see, for example, Deville and Guggenheim, 2018; Eriksen, 2011; Habermas, 2015; Hegemann and Kahl, 2018; Rayner, 2007), they conclude that the combination of these aspects results in an unwarranted form of paternalism where ‘claims to protection are articulated on behalf of the civil population, but not by the civil population’ (Hagmann and Dunn Cavelty, 2012: 90; see also Bossong and Hegemann, 2016).…”

The Historical Embeddedness of Organizational Paradoxes: Risk-related Rituals and Realities in Emergency Management

“…To make sense of this paradoxicality in an intelligible way, we describe how governmental apparatuses for managing risk take shape (e.g. Collier & Lakoff, 2008Deville & Guggenheim, 2018;Deville, Guggenheim, & Hrdličková, 2014). Agencies collectively known as emergency management organizations, for example FEMA and all of its arms in the United States or, in the United Kingdom, the Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms, commonly known as 'COBRA' and the range of 'blue light services', are government institutions responsible for managing catastrophic risks for people and property.…”