Revolution Blues: The Reconstruction of Health and Safety Law as ‘Common‐sense’ Regulation

Abstract

This article reviews the last five years of coalition government policy making in relation to occupational health and safety law. It shows that the most significant and influential element of this activity has been the reframing of the wider regulatory system according to a dominant ideological paradigm of ‘common‐sense’ regulation, to the detriment of other considerations and interests. A social constructionist framework assists in setting out the means through which this new ‘symbolic universe’ of regulatory possibility has been constructed and promulgated within the policymaking arena. In particular, it identifies the key role played by processes of deliberative regulatory engagement in the construction and development of this approach, and identifies the inherent vulnerability of ‘thin’ forms of deliberation to this sort of application.

New governance of corporate cybersecurity: a case study of the petrochemical industry in the Port of Rotterdam

“…On a cognitive level, managers, and even security personnel, are often unaware of the risk and implications of becoming victim to a cyber-incident, and of suitable preventative measures. As corporate crime literature on industrial hazards [18,29,30,44] has already demonstrated, the assumption that firms will take sufficient measures to protect not only themselves and their personnel, but also their wider environment from harm in the absence of external pressure is often problematic. This paper adds to this scholarship an analysis of the emerging risk of cybersecurity, in particularly in highly connected industries.…”

“…Often, these stretch beyond the regional or even national level. The point is that in imagining new and collaborative governance, it is too easily assumed that industry will prevent environmental harm or accidents without adequate incentives, and the role of government agencies in representing and protecting the public interest is not enough thought through [44]. These findings relate to a development in which deregulation and budget cutbacks make it less likely that public authorities can keep up with industries that are generally more powerful and have more knowledge, capacity and resources in the field of cybersecurity than governmental actors (cf.…”

“…In the case of cybersecurity in the port of Rotterdam, a similar process can be observed, in the sense that the preference for voluntary public private collaboration might be interpreted not as a deliberate choice for the best regulatory arrangement, but as the best available option in terms of resources and agency risk aversion. The public private arrangements that actually have developed are more 'thin' than 'thick' versions of the ideal model of collaborative governance [44].…”

Regulatory inspection and the changing legitimacy of health and safety

“…This tied into the pursuit of a broader political narrative equating risk with progress and social freedom, and precaution with irrationality and political illiberalism (Dodds , p. 535), and which insisted on the use of market‐oriented, quantified approaches to regulatory decisionmaking (Black ; Rothstein et al ). While decisionmaking was still couched in the technical, procedural language of scientific risk‐assessment, the weighting of these risks was increasingly undertaken via reference to a wider range of political interests, in particular, those relating to the maintenance of values of self‐reliance, non‐interference, and anti‐interventionism within market settings (Tombs & Whyte ; Almond ). Health and safety regulation, in particular, was characterized by critics as a regulatory system that encouraged illegitimate intervention in the private lives of individuals, and which placed unjustifiable burdens on business.…”

“…In addition, local conditions (resources, time, political pressure, communication barriers) also lead to variations in the way that inspections occur (Hutter ; Mascini & van Wijk ; McAllister ). Profound disagreements remain over the value of regulatory inspection, which is often characterized as intrusive, unreasonable, and inefficient by critical policy commentators (for discussion, see Pires ; Tombs & Whyte ; Almond ). The way that regulatory inspection is used by different regulatory agencies has also changed significantly over time as the dominant conceptual model of regulation has shifted away from state‐led command‐and‐control toward more responsive (Ayres & Braithwaite ), decentered (Black ), and “smart” (Gunningham & Grabosky ) governance‐based formations that allow more room for self‐regulation.…”