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Risk Regulation and Future Learning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2017

Jonathan B. WIENER
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European Journal of Risk Regulation , Volume 8 , Issue 1: Cambridge Inaugural Issue: The Past, Present And Future of Risk Regulation , March 2017 , pp. 4 - 9
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© Cambridge University Press 

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Footnotes

*

Perkins Professor of Law, Public Policy and Environmental Policy, Duke University, Durham NC, USA.

References

1 These stories are recounted in the vivid and poignant biographical history of our grandfather written by my cousin, Nicholas Dawidoff, The Fly Swatter (New York: Pantheon, 2002).

2 E.g., Alexander Gerschenkron, Bread and Democracy in Germany (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1943); Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966).

3 Douglas Martin, “Anthony J. Wiener, Forecaster of the Future, is Dead at 81,” NY Times, 27 June 2012, p. B16, at <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/27/us/anthony-j-wiener-forecaster-of-the-future-is-dead-at-81.html> (accessed 24 January 2017).

4 Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Wiener, The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty-Three Years (New York: Macmillan, 1967) 1–5, 262–264, 386–413.

5 E.g., I worked on the book by Richard Freeman and James Medoff, What Do Unions Do (Basic Books, 1984), and the American Law Institute report on Enterprise Liability (1991) (directed by Richard Stewart and Paul Weiler).

6 Stephen G. Breyer, Breaking the Vicious Circle: Toward Effective Risk Regulation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).

7 On the Hazardous Air Pollutant Strategy Group project, chaired by Paul Portney and John Graham.

8 As special assistant to the Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division of DOJ, Richard Stewart.

9 As senior staff economist for environmental and regulatory issues, for CEA member David Bradford in 1992 and then for chair Laura Tyson and members Alan Blinder and Joseph Stiglitz in 1993.

10 John D. Graham and Jonathan B. Wiener (eds), Risk vs. Risk: Tradeoffs in Protecting Health and the Environment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995).

11 See <http://bookharvestnc.org/about/founders-message/> (accessed 24 January 2017). One of our first community service projects together was: <www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1991/10/17/prenuptial-gathering-a-true-garden-party/f459084d-08f5-4e57-a00c-581d3328eeb0/> (accessed 24 January 2017).

12 See e.g. Richard Andrews, Managing the Environment, Managing Ourselves (2nd edn, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006) (reviewing the history of environmental regulation over the past four centuries).

13 Peter Bernstein, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (New York: John Wiley, 1996). The past was not safer: risks to human life have declined over time, yet with important inequalities, see Angus Deaton, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality (Princeton University Press, 2013). Both new and old technologies have posed risks, and regulation itself is a kind of technology for modulating social activities and outcomes, see Jonathan B. Wiener, “The Regulation of Technology, and the Technology of Regulation” (2004) 26 Technology in Society 483–500.

14 Benjamin Franklin, “Letter to Joseph Priestley” (19 September 1772), in Frank Luther Mott and Chester E. Jorgenson (eds), Benjamin Franklin: Representative Selections, with Introduction, Bibliography and Notes 348–49 (New York: American Book Company, 1936). Franklin’s early version of cost-benefit analysis appears to have contributed to its subsequent development by Jeremy Bentham and the French engineer-economists, and eventually to government policy making in the US and Europe, see Jonathan B. Wiener, “The Diffusion of Regulatory Oversight,” in Richard L. Revesz and Michael A. Livermore (eds), The Globalization of Cost-Benefit Analysis in Environmental Policy (Oxford University Press, 2013).

15 See Jonathan B. Wiener, “Precaution in a Multi-Risk World” in Dennis Paustenbach (ed.), Human and Ecological Risk Assessment: Theory and Practice 1509–31 (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2002).

16 See Neil K. Komesar, Imperfect Alternatives: Choosing Institutions in Law, Economics, and Public Policy (University of Chicago Press, 1994); Charles Wolf, Markets or Governments: Choosing Between Imperfect Alternatives (MIT Press, 1986).

17 See Graham and Wiener, Risk vs. Risk, supra, note 10; Wiener, “Multi-Risk World”, supra, note 15. Such tradeoffs implicate not only quantitative metrics but also preferences and values. See Ortwin Renn, Risk Governance: Coping with Uncertainty in a Complex World (London: Earthscan, 2008).

18 See Graham and Wiener, Risk vs. Risk, supra, note 10; Richard B. Stewart, “Remedying Disregard in Global Regulatory Governance: Accountability, Participation, and Responsiveness” (2014) 108 American Journal of International Law 211.

19 See Graham and Wiener, Risk vs. Risk, supra, note 10; Richard L. Revesz and Michael A. Livermore, Retaking Rationality (Oxford Univ. Press, 2008); Lester Lave, The Strategy of Social Regulation (Brookings, 1981).

20 See Anne-Marie Slaughter, “The Networked Century” (2009) 88 Foreign Affairs 94; .Jonathan B. Wiener, “The Real Pattern of Precaution” chapter 20 in Jonathan B. Wiener et al. (eds), The Reality of Precaution: Comparing Risk Regulation in the United States and Europe (Washington DC: RFF Press/Earthscan/Routledge, 2011) 522, 541–46.

21 See European Environment Agency (EEA), Late lessons from early warnings: The precautionary principle 1896–2000 (Copenhagen, 2001). Risk of irreversible harm may therefore warrant acting and then studying, rather than studying before acting, see Cass R. Sunstein, “Irreversible and Catastrophic” (2006) 91 Cornell Law Review 841, 855.

22 See Graham and Wiener, Risk vs. Risk, supra, note 10; Jonathan B. Wiener, “Managing the Iatrogenic Risks of Risk Management” (1998) 9 Risk: Environment Health & Safety 39–84; Charles Wolf, Markets or Governments, supra, note 16; Jessica Stern and Jonathan B. Wiener, “Precaution Against Terrorism” in Paul Bracken, David Gordon and Ian Bremmer (eds), Managing Strategic Surprise: Lessons from Risk Management and Risk Assessment (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

23 See Graham and Wiener, Risk vs. Risk, supra, note 10; Wiener, “Multi-Risk World”, supra, note 15; Jonathan B. Wiener, “Precautionary Principle” in the volume Ludwig Krämer and Emanuela Orlando (eds), Principles of Environmental Law, of Michael Faure (ed.), Encyclopedia of Environmental Law (IUCN and Edward Elgar, forthcoming 2017).

24 E.g., the European Commission’s Communication on the Precautionary Principle and the French constitutional version of precaution both call for provisionality; see Wiener, in Encyclopedia, supra, note 23.

25 See Wiener, “The Real Pattern” supra, note 20; Jonathan B. Wiener et al., “Better Ways to Study Regulatory Elephants” (2013) 2 European Journal of Risk Regulation 311–19; Joakim Zander, The Application of the Precautionary Principle in Practice: Comparative Dimensions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); International Risk Governance Council (IRGC), Transatlantic Patterns of Risk Regulation: Implications for International Trade and Cooperation (Lausanne: IRGC, 2017).

26 See World Bank, World Development Report (WDR), Risk and Opportunity: Managing Risk for Development (2014) 278–79 (recommending that every country establish a national risk board); European Commission, “Better Regulation: Why and How”, <http://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-making-process/better-regulation-why-and-how_en> (accessed 18 January 2017); Alberto Alemanno, “Assessing the Impact of the Better Regulation Package on the European Union – A Research Agenda” (2015) 6 European Journal of Risk Regulation 344–56; John D. Graham, “The Evolving Regulatory Role of the US OMB” (2007) 1 Review of Environmental Economics and Policy 171–91; Cass R. Sunstein, “White House Review of Regulation: Myths and Realities” (2013) 126 Harvard Law Review 1838–78; Wiener, “Diffusion of Regulatory Oversight” supra, note 14; Jonathan B. Wiener and Daniel L. Ribeiro, “Impact Assessment: Diffusion and Integration” in Francesca Bignami and David Zaring (eds), Comparative Law and Regulation: Understanding the Global Regulatory Process (2016); Jonathan B. Wiener and Alberto Alemanno, “Comparing Regulatory Oversight Bodies: US OIRA and the EU RSB” in Susan Rose-Ackerman and Peter Lindseth (eds), Comparative Administrative Law (2nd edn, Edward Elgar, forthcoming 2017).

27 See Daniel A. Farber, “Environmental Protection as a Learning Experience” (1994) 27 Loyola LA Law Review 791.

28 See Yair Listokin, “Learning Through Policy Variation” (2008) 118 Yale Law Journal 480–553; Wiener, “The Diffusion of Regulatory Oversight” supra, note 14; Gregory E. Kaebnick et al., “Precaution and governance of emerging technologies” (2016) 354 Science 710–11.

29 See Edward Balleisen and Elizabeth Brake, “Historical perspective and better regulatory governance: An agenda for institutional reform” (2014) 8 Regulation & Governance 222–45.

30 See Edward Balleisen et al., Policy Shock: Recalibrating Risk and Regulation after Oil Spills, Nuclear Accidents, and Financial Crises (Cambridge Univ. Press, forthcoming 2017). Hasty reactions to “available” crisis events (without careful learning) can spur unwise regulatory responses, see Timur Kuran and Cass R. Sunstein, “Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation” (1999) 51 Stanford Law Review 683–768.

31 See Cary Coglianese, “Moving Forward with Regulatory Lookback” (2013) 30 Yale Journal on Regulation 57; Jonathan B. Wiener and Daniel L. Ribeiro, “Environmental Regulation Going Retro: Learning Foresight from Hindsight” (2016) 32 Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law 1.

32 See Jonathan B. Wiener and Alberto Alemanno, “The Future of International Regulatory Cooperation: TTIP as a Learning Process toward a Global Policy Laboratory” (2015) 78 Law and Contemporary Problems 103–36; IRGC, “Transatlantic Patterns” supra, note 25.

33 See Michael Greenstone, “Toward a Culture of Persistent Regulatory Experimentation and Evaluation” in David Moss and John Cisternino (eds), New Perspectives on Regulation (2009); Jens Ludwig, Jeffrey R. Kling and Sendhil Mullainathan, “Mechanism Experiments and Policy Evaluations” (2011) 25 Journal of Economic Perspectives 17–38; Rob van Gestel and Gijs van Dijck, “Better Regulation through Experimental Legislation” (2011) 17 European Public Law 539–553.

34 See Lawrence E. McCray, Kenneth A. Oye and Arthur C. Petersen, “Planned Adaptation in Risk Regulation” (2010) 77 Technological Forecasting and Social Change 951; Wiener and Ribeiro, “Going Retro” supra, note 31; IRGC, “Transatlantic Patterns,” supra, note 25.

35 Policy making requires not just assessing risks, but assessing risk reduction options, i.e. solutions. And stated public perceptions of risks may actually reflect unstated preferences about potential solutions, see Troy H. Campbell and Aaron C. Kay, “Solution aversion: On the relation between ideology and motivated disbelief” (2014) 107 Journal of Personal and Social Psychology 809–24; Dan Kahan, “Fixing the communications failure” (2010) 463 Nature 296–297.

36 Because a solution to one risk may induce other risks, as discussed above, learning processes need to encompass the full portfolio of important outcomes. See Wiener, “Managing the Iatrogenic” supra, note 22.

37 See Nick Bostrom, “Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority” (2013) 4 Global Policy 15–31.

38 See Jonathan B. Wiener, “The Tragedy of the Uncommons: On the Politics of Apocalypse” (2016) 7 Global Policy 67–80 (issue S1, May 2016); Bostrom, supra, note 37, 27.

39 See Sunstein, “Irreversible and Catastrophic” supra, note 21 at 884; Elke U. Weber, “Experience-Based and Description-Based Perceptions of Long-Term Risk: Why Global Warming does not Scare us (Yet)” (2006) 77 Climatic Change 103–120.

40 See Paul Slovic, “‘If I Look at the Mass I Will Never Act’: Psychic Numbing and Genocide” (2007) 2 Judgment and Decision Making 79–95.

41 See Wiener, “The Tragedy of the Uncommons” supra, note 38.