The culture of risk regulation: Responses to environmental disasters

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Parrado, Salvador
• 署名单位: Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia (UNED)
• 刊物名称: REGULATION & GOVERNANCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1748-5983
• DOI: 10.1111/rego.12214
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 599-615
• 关键词: politics; Europe

摘要

Disasters challenge the equilibrium of regulatory regimes and make policy shifts more likely. Using an institutional theory of cultural biases and the concept of cultural surprise, this article analyses the direction and intensity of media argumentation in respect of policy shifts. Instead of assuming a demand for greater State intervention after dramatic focusing events, as suggested by other theoretical frames, cultural theory opens a variety of options that range from embracing regulatory responses from different cultural biases to the radicalization of current, but failing, instruments. The analysis of media reaction to the environmental disasters caused by the oil spills of Exxon Valdez (United States), Erika (France) and Prestige (Spain) shows that the demand for more hierarchy does not monopolize the overall argumentation. The change demanded often implies a radicalization of a particular prevalent view where the associated institutional setting is failing its supporters.