The Deliberative Option: The Theoretical Evolution of Citizen Participation in Risk Management and Possibilities for East Asia

Risk analysis has historically been the province of technical experts. As a rational approach to addressing uncertainty, risk analysis has relied on the assessments of highly trained scientists, the decision making of risk management specialists, and the sophisticated communication practices of trained risk communicators. However, contemporary theories of post-empiricist deliberative decision making argue that robust decision making in the face of scientific and value uncertainty requires time and a reliance on citizen participation. This chapter first argues that the history of theory in environmental risk assessment can be characterized as a twofold shift in citizens’ and experts’ role. Citizens’ role has moved from the margin as passive recipients of expert decision making to active arbiters of value rational ends and contributors to instrumentally rational means, while experts’ role has moved in the opposite direction. The chapter then introduces a number of techniques for more directly incorporating citizen viewpoints in decision making processes, ranging from telephone polls to consensus conferences. It finally offers an example of robust citizen deliberation on nuclear power in Korea that has been touted as a Korean model for deliberative polling.