'Risk is what we do': managing risk in public policy administrative work

In the last decades, risk assessment and risk management tools have gained a prominent place in the work of public administrators in the UK (Power, 2004; HM Treasury, The Green Book, 2013). While risk scholars have dedicated a... [ view full abstract ]

In the last decades, risk assessment and risk management tools have gained a prominent place in the work of public administrators in the UK (Power, 2004; HM Treasury, The Green Book, 2013). While risk scholars have dedicated a considerable effort to create, test and provide frameworks and methodologies for administrators to use in specific policy fields, less attention has been dedicated to investigate the impact of the adoption of such tools as resources in 'policy work', i.e. the real-world practices and procedures civil servants use to advice on and devise public policies and initiatives (cf. Heclo and Wildavsky, 1974; Page and Jenkins, 2005; Stevens, 2010; Rhodes, 2011). This paper looks at how, in such work, 'risk' provides for both the conceptual and the practical grounds for the accomplishment of some of the backstage, day-to-day work of policy-making in the environmental sector. The methods employed for this empirical research included a period of one-year participant observation with middle-rank and senior civil servants in a British government department, as well as interviews with policy officers, to document their practices as professional public administrators on environmental issues. The presentation argues that the conceptual grounds of risk applied in the observed workplace transcend the essential characterisation of potential future danger, to embrace features that are organisationally contingent. These include, for instance, matters of reputation, institutional power and financing. Risk discourse and risk-based documenting tools therefore provide for an accounting instrument for officers to prioritise some matters over others - independently of the nature of the risks themselves. This is a diluted territory, where ethics is easily overcome by economic considerations, and critical decisions become separated from their moral corollaries. Officers are taught not to question such 'theoretical' and normative issues. Rather, tools of risk management get to constitute the basis for their practical reasoning (Horlick-Jones, 2006), and 'professional vision' (Goodwin, 1996). My observations highlight the need for an increased understanding on the part of risk scholars of the operationalisation of the concept of risk in policy organisations; and, on the part of policymakers, of the consequences of collapsing risks of different nature into over-simplistic accounting tools.