The effective regulation of risk poses a singular challenge to democracy. The
public welfare of democratic societies depends on their capacity to abate all
manner of natural and man-made hazards – from environmental catastrophe and
economic collapse to domestic terrorism and the outbreak of disease. But the
need to form rational responses to these and other dangers also challenges
democratic societies in a more fundamental way: by threatening their commitment to genuinely deliberative policy making. Effective risk regulation depends on* Reprinted from Kahan, D. M., Slovic, P., Braman, D. and Gastil, J. (2006) ‘Fear of
democracy: A cultural critique of Sunstein on risk,’ Harvard Law Review, vol 119,
pp1071-1109highly technical forms of scientific information – epidemiological, toxicological,
economic and the like. Most citizens don’t even have access to such information,
much less the inclination and capacity to make sense of it. Why, then, should
regulatory law afford any weight to the uneducated opinions of ordinary citizens
as opposed to the reasoned judgements of politically insulated risk experts?
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