Rationality, Risk and Response: A Research Agenda for Biosecurity

Abstract

This article considers how threats become constituted as problems requiring policy responses, and how one might account for such problematizations and responses. Focusing specifically on the threat from bioterrorism, it draws on a broadly constructivist approach to risk, and highlights how ideas around political rationalities, styles of thought, forms of risk and frameworks of knowledge can be useful in thinking about emerging biosecurity policies. It suggests that a comparative study of Britain and the United States might help to clarify how the threat of bioterrorism is being constructed by various groups, how support for particular ‘framings’ of the threat is being mobilized and taken up in policy networks, and how this is linked to different courses of action in response to the possibility of bioterrorism.