Fear of Democracy: A Cultural Evaluation of Sunstein on Risk

Like other accounts that rest on the "irrational weigher model" of risk perception, the position advanced by Cass Sunstein, Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle (2005), ignores the impact of cultural worldviews. Based on the results of the National Risk & Culture Survey, this paper (published in the Harvard Law Review<) presents an alternative "cultural evaluator" model that better explains disagreements over risk and that generates more defensible prescriptions for how to reconcile rational risk regulation with democratic deliberation.

Click to read more ...