Impartiality In Policy Making

In order for objectivity and impartiality to be maintained in policy making, humans are assumed to behave and organise in a rational and atomistic fashion, whereby comprehensive established relationships with professional individuals bare no relevance in decision making. In reality, however, humans are an emotive and perceptive species, and behave more in accordance with the bounded rationality model (Simon, 1972, 165), which is defined as “the idea that when individuals make decisions, their rationality is limited by the tractability of the decision problem, the cognitive limitations of their minds, and the time available to make the decision. Decision-makers in this view act as satisficers, seeking a satisfactory solution rather than an optimal

Namely, the National Research Council, in its investigation of quantitative risk assessments, ‘estimated conservatively that at least fifty opportunities for the insinuation of non-scientific values exist during technical risk assessment’ (Rothstein et Downer, 2008, 21), and noted that “policy considerations inevitably effect, and perhaps determine, some of the choices…” (National Research Council, 1983, 33) as a direct consequence of ambiguity and poorly derived scientific theories. Therefore, the presupposition that risk experts employed in the economic sector differ in judgement to risk experts employed in the public sector can be stated with confidence, with the strive for extensive academic research failing to eradicate judgemental bias evident in risk-based policy making. In addition to the inescapable subjectivity associated with human risk based policy making, the influence of political force on risk assessment further impairs the objective status of risk assessment, with quantitative results produced from risk policy varying significantly depending on the political framework in which it operates and the external and internal political forces present in an organisation. For instance, over three decades on from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, a remarkable level of disagreement over the finalised death toll as a result of released

Western political organisations’ strive for expert generated knowledge has seen an increasing incorporation of national risk registers, which provide an official government assessment of significant current and potential risks to the county under the probability hazard-risk framework. From a governments perspective, the rationalisation of future risk based on this conventional risk analysis formula provides a critical level of certainty and control in an uncertain political and economic environment. As risk-based governance has sought to investigate probability as well as potential hazard, its enhancing reputation as an economically rational decision making instrument has been supported, as well as holding the promise of ‘checking bureaucratic creep and inefficiency, countering vested interests, and mitigating risk-adverse tendencies within government (Rothstein et Downer, 2008, 4). However, as illustrated in numerous critiques of risk-based policy making, the emergence of risk registers has offered an illusion of control and certainty that bears minimal relation to genuine organisational practice, even being referred to as ‘Fantasy Documents’ (Clarke, 1999) that ‘employ a glorified form of guesstimates that