Organized Irresponsibility Research Articles

Public Governance in the Context of Global Turbulence: Risk-Reflexive Approach

The article examines methodological trends and combinations in the discourse of political strategic management of dangers and threats under the conditions of the new specific type of risk society formation, which is qualitatively different from the classical version of the ‘risk society’. In this study, using a risk-reflexive approach, authors propose a research route to analyze the transformation of public governance and enlighten the main directions of social behaviour strategies modeling, designing tools for prevention and reducing negative effects of emerging risks. Based on the analysis of the ‘Giddens paradox’ and the concept of ‘organized irresponsibility’ by U.Beck, the problems of the efficiency of public governance institutions in ensuring security and preventing threats are considered. The authors’ attention is focused on analyzing the hierarchy of ways to justify the acceptability of risk and the subjects of risk management. Approaches to the classification of types of power used by subjects of public risk management are investigated. In this regard, the article identifies three mechanisms for the formation of risk-reflexivity (forced, imitative, normative). A theoretical perspective is presented for considering informational, strategic, institutional, motivational and simulation risk reflections in public governance process. Special attention is paid to the main forms of public governance competencies in political risk management, especially in the context of digital transformation, which opens up new opportunities for information impact and cognitive programming of risk perception.

COVID-19, global public health justice, and the culture of organized irresponsibility

COVID-19, global public health justice, and the culture of organized irresponsibility

Experimental climate governance as organized irresponsibility? A case for revamping governing (also) through government

Experiments in socio-ecological change—real-world laboratories, testbeds, niche experiments, grassroots innovations—are commonly framed as a particularly promising way to respond to pressing challenges such as climate change. In contrast to top-down, expert- and techno-scientific innovation-driven, one-size-fits-all environmental interventions, experimental governance promises to work in the concrete rather than the abstract; to resonate with citizens instead of alienating them, and to give ample space to learning by surprise at a distance from regulatory controls. Without questioning the virtues of experimental governance tout court, this article challenges boosterish accounts of it by arguing and illustrating that “going experimental” may also run a risk. The palpable risk here is fostering a (local) government’s “liberation from responsibility” for tackling the climate crisis by instead encouraging a wide array of local, experimental interventions at a distance to accounting for how particular interventions relate to larger political goals—arguably a form of “organized irresponsibility.” Three common implications of the “rise of experimentation” in governing climate change contribute to this risk: the sidelining of public authority as a specific and key agent of change; the discrediting of top-down governance as undemocratic, if not authoritarian; and the sidestepping of societal change through collectively-binding political decisions. By combining empirical and theoretical insights, this article makes the case for revamping “governing (also) through government.” It does so by offering ways of rethinking public authority, top-down governance, and change by political decision without reasserting what experimentation seeks to transcend: state- and expert-centric, undemocratic, and sovereigntist forms of governing.

Global Markets, Risk, and Organized Irresponsibility in Regional Australia: Emergent Cosmopolitan Identities Among Local Food Producers in the Liverpool Plains☆

AbstractThis paper reflects on the conditions that emerge as regional Australia becomes increasingly immersed in international markets, global and local political shifts, and changing environmental conditions. In the Liverpool Plains region, farmers are deeply reliant on global export markets. Meanwhile, global demand for Australian minerals continues to produce both economic development and environmental degradation. In this context, farmers are drawing on transnational and national social movements to collectively construct their knowledge of risk and “organized irresponsibility” and resist environmental risk by positioning themselves as a part of a cosmopolitan public. While consistently evaluating risks associated with a proposed coal mine, farmers see themselves as having an ethical responsibility as food producers to provide for increasing global populations in a precarious world. These conditions are productive of new risks, identities, as well as new forms of critical, collective practice.

The Organized Irresponsibility Principle and Risk Arbitrage

In an age of accelerating wealth at the very top and accelerating risks at the bottom, there is a clear disjunction between the flow of social benefits and social damages produced by different actors and their share of these respective benefits and damages. Yet, the specific processes that generate the dualization of tracks of accumulation of rewards or accumulation of risks and precarity are still up for debate. In tackling this dual process in a way that is attuned to the critical contribution of contemporary forms of the law to this uneven accumulation of wealth and of risks, this paper focuses on organized irresponsibility—where individuals can cumulatively contribute to risks, but avoid individual culpability—and how relations of organized irresponsibility provide extensive opportunities for risk arbitrage. Risk arbitrage is correspondingly a process where actors, whether it be individuals or larger organizations, can produce social risk, appropriate benefit from these risks, and disproportionately avoid the consequences of the risks so as to benefit from the overall “cycle of reward and risk”—even if society as a whole is worse off. The paper identifies organized irresponsibility as fundamentally undergirded by mismatches between existing configurations of law and the existing complexity of the processes of the production of social goods and risks. This paper proceeds to show how gaps in the law enable the organized irresponsibility principle—that given a level of risk production, the greater the number of actors involved and the greater complexity between causes and the risk’s impacts, the less overall culpability that tends to be assigned. It then shows how the organized irresponsibility principle enables relationships of risk arbitrage that intensify contemporary risk and inequality.

K interpretaci modernizace v podmínkách současné krize životního prostředí

The self-definition and self-reflection of sociology is both clarified in terms of interpretation as well as the living part and factor of the modernization process. The ongoing changes in social modernization, connected with growing ambivalent implications for global state of the environment endangers the very onthological conditions of human societies. These bring about also changes in the modernization interpretations and sociological images. These shifts can be redescribed by an „higher-order paradox of rationalization“. In these terms, two steps of description and argumentation are presented: 1. the Max Webers rationalization thesis and the interpretation problem of the goals – means – consequences of the social action in their mutual intcrconnectedness, 2. the implications of the current sociology risk-analyses and the problem of autonomization of complex socio-technological systems impacts. Both levels imply for a newly informed interpretation of modernization process meaning – in terms of the means/ends relationship of the technical versus wider socio-cultural rationalities. At the center of a „risk society“ developmental processes lies the conflict of these types of rationality Such interpretative framework – where ecological crisis helps to develop more wider perspective – could offer also a conceptual shift in meaning of the social action eoncequences where „unintended consequences“ are becoming rather „systematic products and components of modernization“. Three main barriers of wider social rationality strategy implementation are analysed. 1. the routinization of charisma and cooptation of challenging environmental knowledge, the organized irresponsibility revealing the dilemma of new global risks and old institutions, values and social emphases; 3. continuity in the consumerist hedonism routine reproduction and social indifference. The dilemmas of modernization-associal rationalization call for the new alternative politics the core of which should follow a new development of „practical rationality“, social action model assessing both, means and goals in mutual flexible adaptivity. Such „flexible adaptation model“ would enable for further changes of the means and goals according to the more comprehensive assessment of their impacts.

Of Cripples and Bags. Risk and the Stuff of Reality

A better understanding of what knowledge is and how it works is a crucial tool to cope with the current paradigm shift and the uncertainty it is causing everywhere. It can shed some light on the imaginal foundations of human enterprise, even of reality itself. Reality is in fact the result of innumerable definitions and agreements, to which modernity gave an objective look and claim. Science, however, has grown past this comforting stage and revealed it as wishful thinking. As modern institutions were planned and realized in the light of such convictions, they are no longer up to dealing with a world where certainty is not to be found. Beck’s analysis of global risks clearly shows the ‘organized irresponsibility’ that stems from this state of things. Taking Beck’s insight as a new starting point, it is possible to focus on reality’s complex texture – where real, possible and imagined seem to blend in a dynamic mix – and to advocate the urgency of new heuristic perspectives and frames where imagination and its structures are given back their dignity as fundamental keys to the understanding of human action and decision-making.

Risk illusion and organized irresponsibility in contemporary finance: rethinking class and risk society

This paper analyzes the lead-up to and aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis to show how processes associated with risk society – the social production and distribution of systemic financial risk in a context of organized irresponsibility – are contributing to the intensification of contemporary class-based inequalities. Utilizing a framework based in Bourdieusian class resources, the analysis moves beyond Beck's rejection of the relevance of class relations to systemic risk, and his critics’ denial that risk transforms existing logics of distribution, to identify key shifts in the relation between contemporary financial risk, power and inequality. The conclusions of this study, showing how systemic financial risk in contexts of organized irresponsibility contributes to differential ‘risk-classes’, suggest that risk is a key source of contemporary inequality and that reconstructing the theory of risk society can illuminate these changes.

Ecological modernization and water resource management: a critique of institutional transitions in Ghana

Ghana is endowed with surface and ground water resources. These resources prior to the colonial era were managed by traditional societies through various conventional methods embedded in their cosmovision. However during the colonial and postcolonial regimes, in response to climate change, economic globalization, and population pressure, there has been a conscious shift from customary water management systems towards paradigms cast in the contemporary mould (legislation, policies, and institutions). These modern approaches have been shown over the years to be insufficient in ensuring water sustainability. This insufficiency manifests itself in the increasing water scarcity through anthropogenic-induced water resources degradation and severe climatic variability. Using content analysis, this paper reviews this transition, first to fully understand the intricacies of the evolution and second to draw lessons for better water resources management in Ghana. This paper contends that although Ghana’s water related institutions, laws, and policies are undergoing significant reforms, implementation and practice remains embedded in weak ecological modernization (EM). Institutionalizing a narrow conception of EM will only perpetuate ‘organized irresponsibility’ and permit the continued production of ecological problems, leaving open the question of whether modernization is compatible with ecological sustainability. Though customary water management approaches are not entirely devoid of limitations, simply branding them as obsolete may obviate an important vehicle for water sustainability. In the spirit paradigmatic complementarity, ecosystem-friendly indigenous approaches must be integrated with contemporary management systems for the long term goal of sustainability.

Vulnerability and Climate Change Perceptions: A Case Study in Brazilian Biomes

Based on the assumption that vulnerability is socially constructed, and may thus change according to transformations in human action, it appears necessary to consider the issue at the core of studies on the social aspects of Climate Change (CC), risk level and disaster prevention. The social nature of vulnerability is determined by elements such as poverty, inequality, exclusion and access to sanitation, water, food and education among other factors. In 2010, a study was undertaken in the ambit of the project “Climate Change, Social Inequalities and Vulnerable Populations” about the perception of and an assessment of vulnerability. Information was gathered through interviews using structured questionnaires administered in communities in three Brazilian biomes: the Atlantic Forest, the Amazon and the Semi-Arid and Cerrado region. This paper discusses the result of three case studies: one in Rondonia in the Amazon, and two in the Atlantic Forest biome, one in Rio de Janeiro and another in Santa Catarina. Two points in common among the communities should be highlighted. (1) None of the communities have plans or actions to adapt to natural climate variability, much less to CC. This makes the communities more vulnerable and unprepared to act with protective or reactive preventive measures. (2) Thus, it is important to develop a plan with actions that address the situation of “organized irresponsibility”, understood as a network of mechanisms that treat environmental problems as normal, or regard them as being of governmental responsibility alone.

Accountability and risk governance: a scenario-informed reflection on European regulation of GMOs

Regulating risks in the face of scientific uncertainty poses a particular challenge to policy-makers. Such problems are amplified when decisions are taken in a multi-level framework of supranational governance. The genetically modified organism (GMO) regulation in the European Union constitutes an especially salient issue of risk governance in a multi-lateral arena, as the topic is politically highly visible and decision-making is slow and contested. Furthermore, as authority is dispersed among multiple actors, European risk governance is in need of adequate mechanisms ensuring that decision-makers justify and account for their behavior. While legitimacy aspects of GMO governance have widely been examined, accountability relations within the field of GMO risk governance have hitherto only weakly been explored. Hence, this paper analyzes the question of who can be held accountable under the complex system of supranational risk governance. This paper claims that mere adherence by actors to the regulatory procedures during the decision-making process does not necessarily imply that overall accountability can be secured, resulting in ‘organized irresponsibility’. Although certain piecemeal accountability may exist, establishing overall accountability is complicated, precisely as a result of the complex system of interwoven rules.

<b> Corrupção e novas concepções de direito punitivo: rumo a um direito de intervenção anticorrupção? </b> - doi: 10.5102/rdi.v8i2.1543

Corruption was already handled by the legal system as an illegal practice, even before the arrival of its global prohibition regime, and criminal law methods to deal with this problem were already designed, with varying degrees of sophistication, by various past cultures. The Law uses its more traditional technique, the threat of punishment directed against those who practice the conduct described as corruption within the Law itself. The risk society has led, in Law, to the establishment and expansion of the category of collective legal goods, where it’s inserted the regulation of acts of corruption. The transition from external risk to manufactured risk in modern society is causing a crisis of responsibility, which implies a change in the correlations between risk, responsibility and decisions. From this crisis emerges an “organized irresponsibility”: it increases the diversity of risks created by man, by which people and institutions are naturalistically blamed, and causes extreme deviations, as the expansion of Criminal Law. This paper deeply analyzes models of a new legal technology, possibly suitable for dealing with corruption, but at the same time attempts to depart from traditional paradigms of Criminal Law, towards a merging of Criminal Law and Administrative Law. The adopted nomenclature of Intervention Law is reinforced by a prospective exercise of trying to achieve a legal model of law aimed at intervening to deal with the problems of corruption, listing and analyzing what would be the desirable characteristics of an Anti-Corruption Intervention Law.

Wrestling with uncertain risks: EU regulation of GMOs and the uncertainty paradox

Dealing with uncertain risks is an important challenge. Uncertain risks need to be sharply distinguished from traditional, simple risks which can be calculated by means of statistics. Arguably current governance of uncertain risks tends to erode into organized irresponsibility, i.e., society's ill‐preparedness and inability to deal with surprises, negative consequences and/or long‐term impacts which are associated with uncertain risks, notwithstanding all institutions and procedures in place. In such cases, a particular pattern in risk regulation can be identified, the uncertainty paradox, which is an umbrella term for situations in which uncertainty is acknowledged, but the role of science is framed as one of providing certainty. This article highlights the need to further understand the uncertainty paradox by investigating actual decision‐making processes. Through case‐study research on EU GMO regulation this article examines how various actors actually deal with science, knowledge and uncertainty. Four mechanisms sustaining the uncertainty paradox are inferred: 1) uncertainty intolerance; 2) boundary work; 3) the inclination to equate uncertainty with risk; and 4) technocratic provisions. In conclusion, some suggestions are advanced as to how to break through the uncertainty paradox.

Transitions in environmental risk in a transitional economy: management capability and community trust in Russia

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union 10 years ago, the Russian Federation has undergone a radical social, political and economic transformation. This paper's focus is particularly on the consequences of this transformation for the natural environment. This is done by utilizing Beck's (Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage, 1992) concept of Risk Society to explore the interrelationships between managers, firms and communities in terms of transitions in capabilities, knowledge, trust, and even the very notion of community vis‐à‐vis pollution control and environmental protection. A qualitative study of managers in Russian manufacturing enterprises, environmental regulators and local communities, was undertaken in two provincial Oblasts in the Russian Federation, identifying a number of factors characteristic of Beck's (1992) treatise including ‘risk culture’, ‘organized irresponsibility’, ‘individualization’ and ‘subpolitics’. In so doing a deeper understanding is developed of the impact of economic transition on the environment, indicating a different risk society trajectory to that predicted for the West. The implications for continued, in‐depth research in focusing on economies in transition are also discussed.

Science, Ethics and Policy Responses to the ‘Organized Irresponsibility’

The environmental movement continues to stimulate democratic processes outside formal institutions. The repertoire of issues touches on science, ethics, the market place and the distribution of technological risks. A case in point is the prism of corporate interests that obscures the link of the natural environment and health to scientific and technological developments. Ecological risks, institutional organization and social distribution have become sociologically relevant variables. The configuration of a system of organized irresponsibility guarantees the application of legitimate norms that continue to perpetrate the social systems' threat, despite policy efforts to ameliorate these risks. Further eco-democratic impetus is added by the coalition among environmental, social justice and health advocacy groups. In the process, it is vital to identify the specific environmental impacts on given populations, communities and ecosystems, if a policy strategy is to be effective toward aiding a political ecolo...

Managers' interpretations of LCA: enlightenment and responsibility or confusion and denial?

Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) and ‘life cycle thinking’ are popular approaches to evaluate and manage the environmental aspects of products. While LCA has been propagated as a decision-making tool, the interest here is in LCA as a mental model, which managers may interpret and enact differently. If LCA and ‘life cycle thinking’ manage to infuse organizations with an extended sense of responsibility, this could counteract some of the ‘organized irresponsibility’ of modern markets. However, LCA use may also lead to confusion, doubt and denial. This article explores potential managerial interpretations of LCA with a small illustration from the wholesale trade, and through a conceptualization of the illustration in terms of Hatch's (1993) dynamic model of organizational culture. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.