Improving government policy on risk: Eight key principles

This paper discusses the basic principles that a government should adopt when it comes to risk. There seems to be broad agreement about general principles, such as openness and transparency, involvement, proportionality and consistency, and making decisions based on evidence, but when it comes to a more detailed level, suitable principles are missing or are inconsistent. For example, what does it mean to base decisions on evidence or to act with proportionality when regulating or managing risk? The present paper aims at stimulating a discussion on this topic by formulating eight specific principles that governments should apply for the effective treatment of risk in society. The authors consider these eight principles to reflect current scientific knowledge produced by the risk analysis field, but like all principles of this type they are grounded in normative requirements of “good” governance. Several examples are used to illustrate the discussion.