This multidisciplinary book conceptualizes, maps, and analyses ongoing standardization processes of risk issues across various sectors, processes, and practices. Standards are not only technical specifications and guidelines to support efficient risk governance, but also contain social, political, economic, and organizational aspects. This book presents a variety of standardization processes and applications of standards that may influence our judgements of risk, the organizing of risk governance, and, accordingly, our behaviour. Standardization and standards can impact risk governance in different ways. The most important lessons drawn from the present volume can be summarized in three areas: (1) how standardization might impact on power relations and interests; (2) how standardization may change flexibility in decision-making, communication, and cooperation; and (3) how standardization could (re)direct attention and risk perception. The volume's aim is to present an analysis of standardization processes and how it affects our thinking about risk, how we organize risk governance, and how standardization may influence risk management. In so doing, it contributes to a more informed discourse regarding the use of standards and standardization in contemporary risk management. Standardization and Risk Governance will be of great interest to students of risk, standardization, global governance, and critical security studies.

After the violent conflict in the 1990s, between 25,000 and 30,000 persons were missing in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), their fates and whereabouts unknown. Solving the missing-persons issue, and thus reducing some of the damages of the conflict, has been important in the aftermath crisis management and has been considered a prerequisite to prevent recurrences. Two of the latest developments in these efforts are the adoption of the Law on Missing Persons in October 2004 and the establishment of a state-level institution, the Missing Persons Institute (the MPI BiH) in August 2005. This article examines the missing-persons issue from a risk management and societal safety perspective aimed at creating resilient societies. The state is regarded as a key actor, even when other actors are involved and considered co-responsible. Especially important is the state's ability to establish public confidence in critical social institutions and to build mutual trust among different groups within the population. Based on empirical data, the article explores risk factors and dynamics that may threaten the MPI BiH's ability to contribute to societal safety in a society that has run into what is conceptualized as a social trap. To get out of this trap, parties who profoundly distrust one another will need to cooperate. Explicit as well as implicit objectives, competing rationalities, and perceptions of reality among key actors are discussed. The article also considers how the emotional overrules the rational, how the predominantly ethnic discourse in society overpowers the weaker human-rights discourse, and how this may threaten the important building of confidence and trust.

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After the violent conflict in the 1990s, between 25,000 and 30,000 persons were missing in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), their fates and whereabouts unknown. Solving the missing-persons issue, and thus reducing some of the damages of the conflict, has been important in the aftermath crisis management and has been considered a prerequisite to prevent recurrences. Two of the latest developments in these efforts are the adoption of the Law on Missing Persons in October 2004 and the establishment of a state-level institution, the Missing Persons Institute (the MPI BiH) in August 2005. This article examines the missing-persons issue from a risk management and societal safety perspective aimed at creating resilient societies. The state is regarded as a key actor, even when other actors are involved and considered co-responsible. Especially important is the state's ability to establish public confidence in critical social institutions and to build mutual trust among different groups within the population. Based on empirical data, the article explores risk factors and dynamics that may threaten the MPI BiH's ability to contribute to societal safety in a society that has run into what is conceptualized as a social trap. To get out of this trap, parties who profoundly distrust one another will need to cooperate. Explicit as well as implicit objectives, competing rationalities, and perceptions of reality among key actors are discussed. The article also considers how the emotional overrules the rational, how the predominantly ethnic discourse in society overpowers the weaker human-rights discourse, and how this may threaten the important building of confidence and trust.