Understanding Risk Informing Decisions in a Democratic Society (1996) / Chapter Skim
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3 DELIBERATION
3 DELIBERATION
Pages 73-96
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From page 73... ...
Deliberation successful risk characterization depends on an analytic-deliberative process. This chapter and the next explain what we mean by the terms deliberation and analysis and how both are important in each of the tasks involved in understanding risks.
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From page 74... ...
Risk, as we have outlined, is often such an issue: people with different values and interests often develop conflicting understandings of the same risk situations (e.g., Whittemore,1983; Dietz and Rycroft, 1987; lasanoff, 1987; Johnson and Covello, 1987; Lynn, 1986; Clarke, 1988; Dietz, Stern, and Rycroft, 1989; Dake, 1991; Kraus, Malmfors, and Slovic, 1991; Flynn, Slovic, and Mertz, 1994; Peters and Slovic, 1995.) In the process leading to risk characterization, deliberation may involve various combinations of scientific and technical specialists, public officials, and interested and affected parties.
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From page 75... ...
Appropriately structured deliberation complements analysis by adding knowledge and perspectives that improve understanding. In emphasizing the complementarily of analysis and deliberation and the importance of broad participation, this volume is part of an evolution from previous National Research Council studies of risk issues.
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From page 76... ...
The conveners of a process leading to a risk characterization must organize deliberative processes that steer between two shoals: being so concerned with reaching closure that the process excludes important perspectives, diminishes understanding, and threatens the acceptance of decisions; and being so concerned with inclusiveness and completeness that decisions are unnecessarily delayed. Government agencies sometimes need routines for making decisions quickly, and the deliberative strategies we discuss can be quite useful in establishing these routines.
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From page 77... ...
Broadly based deliberations are those in which, in addition to the involvement of appropriate policy makers and specialists in risk analysis, participation from across this spectrum of parties is sufficiently diverse to ensure that the important, decision-relevant knowledge enters the process, that the important perspectives are considered, and that the parties' legitimate concerns about the inclusiveness and openness of the process are addressed. Such deliberation involves the participation or at least the representation of the relevant range of interests, values, and outlooks as well as the relevant range of expertise.
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From page 78... ...
In a broadly based deliberation, the knowledge and perspectives of the spectrum of interested and affected parties are represented. Another difference is the venue: deliberation occurs not only in public settings, but also in the course of the ordinary activities of the agency or other organizations developing a risk characterization.
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From page 79... ...
These relationships provide strong justification for broadly based deliberation about risk, especially at the point of making substantive decisions about how to cope with it. This section emphasizes the role of deliberation in informing those decisions, a topic somewhat more to the point of risk characterization and one that has not been as well developed in research (but see, e.g., Dietz, 1987, 1994, and an emerging literature on participatory research on risk, e.g., Brown, 1990; Fischer, 1993; Sclove, 1995~.
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From page 80... ...
At the Hanford, Washington, nuclear weapons production site, deliberation by a broadly based working group considering remediation issues led to a call for different analyses depending on whether or not a particular area was slated for future agricultural use (Hanford Future Sites Working Group, 1992~. Such broadly based deliberation can help make analysis more effective and make risk characterization more responsive to the needs of all the parties to a decision.
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Broadly based deliberation can also increase acceptance of the sub
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From page 82... ...
By involving these parties in the tasks leading up to risk characterization as well as in substantive negotiations, misunderstandings and disagreements about scientific knowledge are ironed out early on. Analysis tends to focus on the issues that divide the parties, and the negotiated rule better fits the understandings and matches the needs of the parties.
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Limitations The best designed analytic-deliberative processes cannot eliminate all the problems and controversy associated with contentious risk decisions. They cannot guarantee acceptance of an agency's risk decision or even a risk characterization (e.g., Rosener, 1978~.
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Those responsible for a risk characterization should think carefully before convening a broadly based deliberation when such constraints are likely to become an issue for participants; similarly, interested and affected parties should consider whether they want to participate in a process if their serious concerns cannot be given consideration in the decision. Challenges Deliberation also presents several challenges that may be addressed with careful attention to the process.
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From page 85... ...
An organization can become too impatient for results to allow the deliberation to proceed at its own pace, and organizational pressures may force the officials responsible for deliberative processes to end them prematurely. These pressures create the potential for illusory deliberation, a situation in which an orga
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From page 86... ...
They may have various reasons for wanting to avoid making final decisions (see Graham, 1985; Dwyer, 1990) problem of reaching closure in more detail in Chapter 5 We discuss the We are convinced that in the past, some high-profile risk decisions have suffered because not enough attention was given to the analyticdeliberative process that supported risk characterization.
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From page 87... ...
We propose that government agencies operate on the opposite default assumption: that participation across the spectrum of interested and affected parties is warranted at each significant step of the analytic-deliberative process that leads to risk characterization. Particularly for government regulatory agencies that have limited public trust, it is usually wiser to err on the side of too broad rather than too narrow participation.
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From page 88... ...
Generally, parties that are interested or affected by a risk, or by a possible decision about risk, are candidates for participation at all the steps leading to a risk characterization. Is Direct Participation Needed?
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From page 89... ...
These parties may include children, the disabled, and future generations, as well as nonhuman species and ecosystems. Since it may be necessary to represent these perspectives to achieve a full understanding of risk and an acceptable risk characterization, some form of indirect representation is the only option.
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From page 90... ...
This is the standard procedure in public hearings and notice-and-comment rulemaking: an organization or government agency makes a public announcement, and anyone who wishes may participate. Although this approach is fair in the sense of allowing equal opportunity, it has some well-known limitations.
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From page 91... ...
External input can be important in this step as a source of expertise on local conditions and social and organizational factors that affect exposures to hazards. Such expertise is needed to keep risk assessments and risk characterizations from adopting implausible or false assumptions.
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From page 92... ...
Mandated regulatory timelines can also be a serious constraint on deliberation and may lead agency officials to limit the length of a deliberative process. Time schedules can present a serious problem for lower level officials in agencies who are asked to organize deliberative processes because nontraditional approaches to deliberation are perceived as time-consuming (Crowfoot and Wollendeck, 1990~.
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From page 93... ...
For example, as noted above, some parties may perceive an interest in delaying risk characterization or in prolonging the analytic process in order to delay a decision. They may therefore welcome an opportunity to deliberate and use it to create delays.
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With frequently repeated decisions, it may be appropriate to conduct a broadly based deliberation to arrive at a procedure for characterizing risks and then to implement that procedure routinely for many decisions until it is time to reconsider the procedure, in a second broadly based deliberation. We discuss such issues in more detail in Chapter 5.
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From page 95... ...
The responsible government agency or other organization is also a coparticipant, with a legitimate interest and, perhaps a legal mandate to be involved in the risk characterization and the goal of reaching a fair and wise policy decision. An agency that is responsible for managing a risk is not a neutral party.
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From page 96... ...
We list these methods to suggest the variety of possibilities available to agencies, but we do not consider the list exhaustive, and we do not recommend general use of any particular method or technique. In our judgment, the choice of a deliberative technique depends on the risk situation and on the particular risk characterization task.
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