Putting varieties of risk-based governance into institutional context: The case of flood management regimes in Germany and England in the 1990s and 2000s.

This thesis analyses how floods are managed in two European countries, focusing in particular on the role of risk instruments within emerging flood management regimes. Studying flood management is not only relevant because of a rise in frequency and severity of flood events in the 1990s and 2000s, and the expectation of a further increase due to a changing climate. It is also a particularly suitable issue to enrich our understanding of how institutions shape risk-based governance. -- Examining how institutions shape risk-based governance challenges and refines existing contributions on the rise of risk-based governance. In the literature, this rise is associated with arguments of the functional rationality of risk-based governance, in response to the particular problem of flooding, and to the wider need to deal with challenges to states as effective and legitimate problem-solvers. These arguments suggest a universal appeal and adoption of risk-based governance. -- This assumption is challenged by undertaking a comparative analysis of the flood regimes of Germany and England in the 1990s and 2000s. Germany and England are compared because, actors in both countries have, following major flood events in the 1990s and 2000s, recognised the importance of risk instruments for their emerging, more anticipatory and adaptive approaches to flood management, and are seemingly subject to similar pressures on the state actors to become more effective and accountable. At the same time, they display substantive differences in their institutions. -- In a first, descriptive step, using the risk regulation regime approach (Hood et al 2004), it will be demonstrated that risk instruments differ along three dimensions in the two countries’ regimes.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral Thesis

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

King's College London

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Krieger, Kristian

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Rothstein, Henry Frederick
• Demeritt, David Burgess

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

oai:kclpure.kcl.ac.uk:studenttheses/6f15e0c9-fad1-409f-86d1-2ffd1358d10b

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:kclpure.kcl.ac.uk:studenttheses/6f15e0c9-fad1-409f-86d1-2ffd1358d10b