Regulatory Crisis: Negotiating the Consequences of Risk, Disasters and Crises

Using a new concept - 'regulatory crisis' - this book examines how major crises may or may not affect regulation. The authors provide a detailed analysis of selected well-known disasters, tracing multiple interwoven sources of influence and competing narratives shaping crises and their impact. Their findings challenge currently influential ideas about 'regulatory failure', 'risk society' and the process of learning from disasters. They argue that interpretations of and responses to disasters and crises are fluid, socially constructed, and open to multiple influences. Official sense-making can be too readily taken at face value. Failure to manage risks may not be central or even necessary for a regulatory crisis to emerge from a disaster; and the impacts for the regulator can take on a life detached from the precipitating disaster or crisis.

Bridget M. Hutter is Professor of Risk Regulation in the Department of Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science. She is a leading authority on risk regulation and her book publications include Compliance (1997); Regulation and Risk (2001); Organizational Encounters with Risk (Cambridge, 2005); and Anticipating Risks and Organizing Regulation (Cambridge, 2010).

Sally Lloyd-Bostock is Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She was Professor of Psychology and Law at the University of Birmingham and Director of the University's Institute of Judicial Administration. She is widely known for her influential work in psychology and law.