دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی مدیریت ریسک در یک محیط سیاست: چالش های خاص مرتبط با ریسک های شدید - الزویر 2018

ABSTRACT

This essay explores the ways in which understandings derived from approaches to general risk management in the policy environment provide a useful starting point for wider consideration of approaches to extreme risks. The findings are not the result of a research project, but draw on practice and reflection on risk management and strategic futures in central government in the UK over the last 15 years, with an emphasis on the role of the Government Chief Scientific Advisor and Government Office for Science. From the perspective of a policy-maker, extreme risks are likely to be viewed initially through the lens of experience of risk in policy-making more generally. Approaches to the management of well-characterised risks in the context of civil emergencies show the importance of linking assessments of risk to the purpose of making the assessment, of communication and engagement, and of avoiding groupthink and narrow disciplinary discussions. In some cases where the risks cannot be well-characterised or easily imagined, new forms of visualisation and narrative, including futures work, can be used to shape and bound the risks and to engage policy-makers or citizens. Approaches to risk management in the context of innovation policy show the need to consider the risk of inaction as well as action, and the importance of path dependency.

5. Conclusion: science, evidence and policy co-evolving

This essay finishes with some further examples of where science, evidence and policy have evolved together. These give, at the very least, proof of concept that even scientific issues freighted with value and risk can be considered and move forward.

One important strand is the way in which the science community reflects and responds. The emergence of new science itself changes the scientific agenda and becomes a source of meaningful questions for the same or different disciplines. Work by the Royal Society and many others has helped ensure that research on geo-engineering across disciplines is leading to phased insights. A similar pattern is reflected in the “web of protection” around biosecurity. The Society’s project on machine learning in turn helped inform new research agendas in areas such as interpretability, or human-machine partnerships.

A second strand is the evidence that society does not have to be the victim of technological determinism or of existing views of human nature. There is a growing body of investigation into how major policy shifts – the introduction of Human Rights legislation, for example – take place and how evidence and scholarship, public debate, law, policy and practice intertwine. A study by the Institute of Government (The S Factors, 2011) found common patterns in areas where policy had changed over 20 or 40 years, to positions that would not have been considered possible at the start, such as smoking going from high status to being banned in public places, or the introduction of the UK’s Climate Change Act with its statutory carbon budgets.