Varieties of Risk Analysis in Public Administrations

<p>This book sets out a novel conceptual and analytical framework to explain why risk analysis cost-benefit analysis and similar analytical tools have gained sizeable currency in public administrations in comparative perspective. </p><p>Situated in critical interpretive policy analysis methodology the book systematizes and innovates respective debates in three ways. First it develops a novel typology of actors’ appreciations of analytical tools as instrumental problem-solving legitimacy-seeking and power-seeking. It conceptualizes the latter two as polity policies with actors seeking to confirm or rework decision-making structures. Second the book theorizes how executive fragmentation and the multiplication of coordination requirements – often treated as hindrances to substantial analytical turns in an administration – nourish actors’ ideal typical appreciations of analytical tools in distinct ways. Lastly it scrutinizes varieties of risk analysis across three risk-heavy policy domains in Germany (including the EU) and discusses the potential of risk analysis to stabilize or transform decision-making in multi-level settings. </p><p>This book will be of key interest to policy analysts and risk analysts and scholars of European politics comparative politics policy studies public administration multi-level governance EU studies risk analysis policy evaluation and the political sociology of quantification.</p>