The Perception and Management of Security and Safety Risks: Implications for International Negotiations

Abstract

The increasing complexity of the modern world introduces multiple risks for human and environmental safety and economic development, with the most serious involving threats to both national and international security. This poses a major challenge to national governments and international institutions responsible for crisis management policy, within which mitigation serves as both the most efficient conceptual framework and the most effective tool. At the core of this challenge is risk management, including components of risk handling and communication that imply an active negotiating role for the parties concerned. This paper attempts to show how and to what extent the perception and framing of the security risks under negotiation impact on the procedures of the agenda-setting, discussions, signing and executing of international agreements. To investigate this, four hypotheses concerning the role of both substance- specific and party-specific modes of risk perception in framing the model of the negotiation process are developed, and (in a preliminary fashion) tested. The discussion starts by considering the ways in which risk is perceived and managed as factors in international negotiations, providing an overview of the substance- and party-related issues in crisis policy, in particular those of crisis prevention and mitigation. This is followed by an analysis of parties' modes of risk perception and management, coupled with the specificity of risk issues as the substance of negotiations and embedded in national crisis policies.