In modern Western societies the societal emphasis on risk and the minimization of it frequently leads to a call for increasing risk regulation. This mechanism is referred to as the vicious circle of risk regulation, and might cause a variety of problems such as overregulation and breaches of individual privacy. Different solutions have been put forward to break the vicious circle: a greater emphasis on individual citizens’ responsibility, a more rational approach in which governments calculate the greatest safety yield for a given budget and greater democracy: citizen participation in risk and safety related decision making processes. As each approach involves serious disadvantages the authors argue that a well-considered, unhurried approach might be the best way forward. Leadership is largely about timing and with regard to risk management after critical events taking one's time seems crucial indeed.

This article critically reflects upon the introduction of behavioural, ‘nudging’ approaches into UK policy making, the latest in a series of regulatory innovations. Initiatives have focused particularly upon correcting lifestyle risk behaviours, marking a significant continuity with previous ‘nannying’ policy. On the other hand, nudging represents a departure, even inversion of previous approaches that involved the overstating of risk, being based partly upon establishing a norm that bad behaviours are less, rather than more common than supposed. Despite substantive similarities, its attraction lies in the reaction against the former approach but must also be understood in the context of the economic crisis and a diminished sense of liberty and autonomy that makes intimate managerial intervention seem unproblematic. Problems are, in fact, substantial, as nudging is caught between the utility of unconscious disguised direction and the need to allow some transparency, thereby choice. Further, it assumes clear, fixed ‘better outcomes’ but encourages no development of capacity to manage problems, contradicting a wider policy intent to build a more responsible and active citizenry. More practically, nudging faces considerable barriers to becoming a successfully implemented programme, in the context of severe, Conservativeled austerity with which it is now associated.

STOA, the European Parliament's Technology Assessment body, which I had the honour to chair, has a mission to: (i) assess the impact of introducing and promoting new technologies, and (ii) identify the relevant policy options. In the context of its work, STOA has to address many different issues. One of the issues deserving STOA's attention is the changing face of risk governance: “Moving from precaution to smarter regulation”.

This is currently being debated on various levels, including that of the WTO (World Trade Organization), where science-based decision-making has always played an important role. The JRC (Joint Research Centre) is very active in this field and has developed, among others, a science-based approach to risk assessment in the area of nanotechnology. With the comitology procedure becoming more and more important, the European Parliament and its members have to assume their role with respect to risk management and explain it to the public.

The precautionary principle in public decision making concerns situations where following an assessment of the available scientific information, there are reasonable grounds for concern for the possibility of adverse effects on the environment or human health, but scientific uncertainty persists. In such cases provisional risk management measures may be adopted, without having to wait until the reality and seriousness of those adverse effects become fully apparent. This is the definition of the precautionary principle as operationalized under EU law. The precautionary principle is a deliberative principle. Its application involves deliberation on a range of normative dimensions which need to be taken into account while making the principle operational in the public policy context. Under EU law, any risk management measures to be adopted while implementing the precautionary principle, have to be proportionate to ensure the chosen high level of protection in the European Community.

This article will illustrate the established practice concerning the release of genetically modified organisms into the environment and how the principle is implemented under hard law. The article also provides an outlook on what this may imply for the relative new case of nanotechnology and the use of precautionary principle within the context of soft law (use of codes of conduct).

Over recent years there has been a growing concern for the tendency of modern Western public administrators and regulators to overregulate risk – also coined the risk-regulation-reflex (RRR). Too often public decision-makers react to instances of risk with knee-jerk interventions such as increased regulation and inspections. The underlying assumption behind this response is that fatalism, in the sense of accepting risk, is no longer tolerated by citizens and has no place in the current political discourse. This paper challenges that assumption and suggests, on the contrary, that political messages about accepting risk deserve a revival. A balanced perspective can help Western society avoid the pitfall of overreacting to risk.

Behavioural economics is helping illuminate the limits of rational individual choice. At the same time, even as research identifies failures in rationality, policy must inquire about the possibility and legitimacy of government intervention. In ‘Nudging’ Healthy Lifestyles: The UK Experiments with the Behavioural Alternative to Regulation and the Market, Adam Burgess critically describes the introduction of behavioural approaches into UK policy making. In particular, Burgess is concerned with the wholesale adoption of nudge-style programmes to promote healthier living among citizens. Unsurprisingly, the UK developments find equivalent developments in the United States. In January 2009, President Barack Obama suggested that “the principles governing regulation … be revisited.” Envisioning a ‘behavioural dream team’ of economists and psychologists to help lead the way, President Obama appointed Cass Sunstein, the co-author of Nudge, as Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.1 President Obama further ordered the US Office of Management and Budget to “clarify the role of the behavioral sciences in formulating regulatory policy.” The parallels between the countries are striking. The new UK leadership has consulted with Nudge's other co-author, Richard Thaler. The new leadership has guided top administrators to read behavioural research and a “Behavioural Insight Team” has been newly formed within the Prime Minister's Cabinet Office. More operationally, each of the governments has adopted initiatives to nudge citizens to better behaviour, physically and financially.

Risk management and oversight have long been recognized as core corporate governance issues and have gained renewed attention in the wake of the financial crisis. Recent corporate governance reforms in China follow these global trends. This article is the first to examine the intersections between corporate governance and risk regulation in China from a comparative perspective. It surveys corporate governance tools that have been adopted by Chinese regulators and firms to motivate effective risk oversight and risk management across the corporate enterprise, focusing on China's regulation of internal controls and risk management systems. These internal mechanisms are particularly important given the widely recognized limits of external monitoring and enforcement mechanisms in China.

This article observes that recent guidelines on enterprise risk management (ERM) and internal controls reflect international corporate governance standards and that China adopts a broad perspective on risk oversight that extends to both financial and non-financial risks. China's adoption of international models offers a new opportunity to reexamine longstanding debates on the potential for global corporate governance convergence. This article argues that China has adopted a regulatory approach to internal risk oversight and management that is consistent with its historical law reform trajectory, the reality of China's state-dominated equity markets, and the continued influence of the state on firm management. Its conclusions support the literature on the path dependency of corporate governance systems and prior comparative studies of corporate governance in China that find convergence of form but divergence of function.

We deepen Adam Burgess’ insight that under current conditions nudging cannot solve complex policy problems reliably and without controversy. We do so by integrating his concerns about nudging into Braden Allenby and Daniel Sarewitz's three-leveled model of the basic problems technology can address and generate. We use this model to explain why the UK experiment with nudging has revolved around techno-fixes with limited policy potential, and conclude that nudging is best seen as an emerging form of soft law.

This article argues that European Union (EU) risk regulation of hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) was both a trigger and formative factor in the development of similar Chinese regulation. The attractiveness and global interdependence of the EU market in EEE impelled a response from Chinese policy-makers. Fostering the domestic industry's global competitiveness was one of the driving factors behind Chinese substance restriction regulation. Additionally, symbolic emulation and growing domestic environmental problems related to waste EEE infl uenced the Chinese policy agenda. Chinese substance restriction rules are not, however, a mere copy of EU regulation. The limited domestic capacity of the Chinese economy, administration, and legal structure to adopt policies similar to those of the EU explains, to a large extent, the emergence and partial persistence of differences between EU and Chinese risk regulation. In the course of the implementation and evaluation of Chinese substance restriction regulation, lessons learned from the EU’s experience increasingly contributed to shaping the policy, leading to growing convergence.

Both the Lisbon Treaty and the new Inter-Institutional Agreement strengthen the role of the European Parliament (EP) as co-legislator. At the same time, European Union (EU) officials increasingly recognise the need for broader acceptance of the principles and agreements of the Better (Smart) Regulation strategy, as proposed in an October 2010 Commission Communication. There is a need to make high quality risk management decisions in a more risk averse environment and a changed policy framework. Indeed, principles supporting better regulation have become more widely adopted by all EU institutions, notably with the Impact Assessment Board (IAB) of the European Commission, which now screens all new proposals. Due to the broad diffusion of these principles, risk assessment techniques have become more widely understood. This trend is particularly salient in four areas of application: (1) the on-going debate between regulating by hazard and regulating by risk; (2) a better understanding of the nature of risk/risk trade-offs, (3) use of benefit/risk assessment, and (4) the Commission Communication regarding the precautionary principle.

Safety regulations are too often disproportional in the sense that their costs outweigh the benefits. Although this is well known, years of trying to reduce safety related regulatory pressure has not resulted in much success. Two important causes for this have not received much attention up to now. One of these is a faulty perception of how the general public regards risk. We argue that the intractable citizen's behaviour needs better understanding. The second cause is the single-mindedness of risk experts which calls for specific instruments to be harnessed.

This paper argues that the EU regulatory practice in the food area may be unnecessarily applying the Precautionary Principle by focussing on upper intake limits for naturally occurring nutrients, while not controlling the quality of the ingredients used in commercial products even though precedents of public health issues arising from adulterated ingredients do exist. Risk governance depends heavily on expert evidence and the case of amino acid supplements is used to document an industry-supported effort to strengthen the science database and thus enhance the regulatory process: Thus ensuring that amino acid use in the EU is safely and proportionately regulated. Scientific work conducted in the last decade by the not-for-profit association, the International Council on Amino Acid Science (ICAAS) is used as a simple case study highlighting the role of proactive clinical research in an era characterized by precaution in risk management, and by the escalating costs of scientific research, and the growing influence of the internet.

At a time when policy makers want to change the behaviour of citizens to tackle a broad range of social problems, such as climate change, excessive drinking, obesity and crime, a promising new policy approach has appeared that seems capable of escaping the liberal reservations typically associated with all forms of regulatory action. After having relied on the assumption that governments can only change people's behaviour through rules and regulations, policy makers now seem ready to design policies that better reflect how people really behave, not how they are assumed to behave as rational agents. The approach, which stems from the increasingly ubiquitous findings of behavioural research, is generally captured under the evocative concept of ‘nudge’. Inspired by ‘libertarian paternalism’, it suggests that the goal of public policies should be to steer citizens towards making positive decisions as individuals and for society while preserving individual choice. Acting as ‘choice architects’ policy makers organize the context, process and environment in which individuals make decisions. In so doing, they exploit some patterns of irrationality, often called ‘cognitive biases’, to manipulate people's choices. Thus, in the famous Cafeteria example, the school's management might try to affect students’ diet by rearranging the display of food to make it more likely that students will choose the healthy option. This innovative approach to policy making is part of a broader shift from traditional regulation to regulatory governance that is generally referred to as New Governance.

This paper provides a holistic review of market surveillance in China from a legal perspective, supplemented by the authors’ practical knowledge. The fundamental legal bases of market surveillance, namely the Law on Product Quality, the Law on Import and Export Commodity Inspection and the Law on Standardization, along with their associated implementation regulations, are thoroughly examined. Thereby the special features of market surveillance in the Chinese context are presented. This, in particular, includes the differentiation between market surveillance on the production and circulation stages (pre-marketand post-market) and an introduction of the two major competent authorities, the GeneralAdministration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, the State Administrationfor Industry and Commerce, and their respective statutory functions specified by a range of laws and administrative regulations as well as the demarcation of their competencies. The authors also take efforts to explore market surveillance on two spe cial markets, foodand pharmaceuticals, which also includes the legal basis, legal instruments and competent authorities, representing different supervision approaches compared with ordinary products.In the end, market surveillance on and by conformity assessment bodies are briefl yreviewed to provide another angle for the observation of the Chinese system.