The Risk of Risk Regulation: A Thirty-Year LSE Perspective

Drawing on the analytic themes that featured in LSE’s teaching and research in the field since the early 1990s, this paper takes a ‘then and now’ three-decade perspective on the regulation of high-hazard industries. It argues there are some clear continuities in the underlying regulatory dilemma (namely, the costs and benefits of ‘togetherness’ versus social distance between regulators and regulatees) and in the recurring recipes for the handling of major risks. But it also shows that there have been shifts in the saliency of the various hazards in debate, new epistemic players (notably ethicists) figuring more prominently on the regulatory scene, and more awareness of political constraints on alternatives to classic regulation, such as enforced self-regulation and safety cultures in high-reliability organisation.