Risk, uncertainty and policy: towards a social-dialectical understanding

Abstract

This editorial introduces a special issue devoted to studies of risk and uncertainty in their relation to policy and policy-making. The special issue comprises a rather diverse collection of six original research articles, each taking up a distinct perspective in scrutinising interfaces between policy, risk and uncertainty. The purpose of this editorial is to present some broader themes in the literature before moving on to sketch out a basic model for dialectically connecting risk and uncertainty to policy, as a basis for relating the respective insights which emerge within the six empirical articles. The editorial concludes with an overview of these six studies which appear in the special issue.

Keywords:

• claims-making
• evidence
• governance
• institutions
• policy
• risk
• uncertainty

Notes

1. Though analytically it is useful to make this distinction between practical/material intervention and rhetoric, empirically these two are often very much bound up with one another in the experiences of policy implementers and citizens.