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Environ. Sci. Technol., 33 (18), 3049 -3055, 1999. 10.1021/es981283m S0013-936X(98)01283-8 Web Release Date: July 29, 1999

Copyright © 1999 American Chemical Society

A Model for an Analytic-Deliberative Process in RiskManagementOrtwin Renn*

Center of Technology Assessment, Industriestrasse 5, D-70565 Stuttgart, Germany

Received for review May 6, 1999

Accepted May 10, 1999

Abstract:

How can and should risk managers collect public preferences, integrate public input into themanagement process, and assign the appropriate roles to technical experts, stakeholders, and membersof the public? Which concerns are legitimate for being used in decisions that may determine the life ordeath of many people? There are no simple answers to these questions. This paper discusses thepotential and requirements for an analytic-deliberative decision making process in the field of riskmanagement. It articulates the requirements for integrating analytic reasoning with deliberation andinterpretation. As a result of these requirements a model of participation is developed that attempts tomeet two major objectives: first, to enhance the competence in the decision making process and, second,to assign a fair share of the responsibility of managing risks to those who are or will be affected by thepotential consequences. The model, named cooperative discourse, consists of three major steps:elicitation of values and criteria (stakeholder groups); provision of performance profiles for each policyoption (experts); and evaluation and design of policies by randomly selected citizens. The paperprovides some empirical evidence about the application of this method from experiences in threedifferent countries. The case studies show that analytical thinking and deliberative exchange ofarguments cannot be separated but should be'integrated in the decision making process. At the sametime, the sequential involvement of stakeholders, experts, and the general public proved to be aproductive way of ensuring competence, fairness, and efficiency.

1. Introduction

Inviting the public to be part of the decision making process in risk analysis and management has been amajor objective in European and American risk policy arenas. The recent report by the NationalAcademy of Sciences encourages risk professionals to foster citizen participation and publicinvolvement in risk management (1). The report emphasizes the need for a combination of assessmentand dialogue which the authors have termed the "analytic-deliberative" ap proach. Unfortunately, earlypublic involvement of the public in deliberative processes may compromise, however, the objective ofefficient and effective risk reduction or violate the principle of fairness (2). Another problem is that the public consists of many groups with different value structures and preferences. Without a systematic

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procedure to reach consensus on values and preferences, the public's position often appears to beunclear (3). Participatory processes are thus needed that combine technical expertise, rational decisionmaking, and public values and preferences. The new keywords are trust-building, communitydevelopment, and co-determination (4).

The popularity associated with the concepts of two-way communication, trust-building, and citizenparticipation, however, obscures the challenge of how to put these noble goals into practice and how toensure that risk management reflects competence, efficiency, and fair burden sharing. Fairness is key toproducing a forum where equality and popular sovereignty can emerge and personal competence candevelop. When participation is fair, everyone takes part on an equal footing. Political equality andpopular sovereignty also make an argument for efficiency and competence. Procedures of publicinvolvement can be called efficient if the costs in terms of money and time are proportional to theoutcome of the process. Nobody likes to waste time on endless discussions without a serious product atthe end. To ensure efficient deliberation, the persons in a deliberative process need to be competent.Namely, all participants should be capable of protecting their own interests while also being capable ofcontributing to the definition of the collective will (5). Competence, in this sense, relates to the use of the best available knowledge and listening and communication skills, as well as the ability to articulate,evaluate, and refute arguments about an issue. When the purpose of public participation is to produce acollective decision, competent understandings about terms, concepts, definitions, and language use; theobjectified world of outer nature (nature and society); the social-cultural world of norms and values; andthe subjective worlds of individuals are all essential. This is accomplished through the use of establishedprocedures.

How can these procedures be developed? How can risk managers collect public preferences, integratepublic input into the management process, and assign the appropriate roles to technical experts,stakeholders (i.e., socially organized groups that are or perceive themselves as being affected by thedecision), and members of the public? Who represents the public? The elected politicians,administrators, stakeholders, or all persons who will be affected by the risk? There is a large amount ofindividual variance when lay persons are asked to give their best risk estimate (6, 7). Which estimateshould be used for risk management? Which concerns are legitimate for being used in decisions thatmay determine the life or death of many people?

This paper discusses the need, potential, and requirements for an analytic-deliberative decision makingprocess in the field of risk management. The following section takes a close look at the specificrequirements for analytic-deliberative processes before the third section introduces and describes astructured model of cooperative discourse. This model of participation attempts to meet two majorobjectives: first, to enhance the competence in the decision making process and, second, to assign a fairshare of the responsibility of managing risks to those who are or will be affected by the potentialconsequences. The fourth section provides some empirical evidence about the application of this methodfrom experiences in three different countries. The last section summarizes the major findings of thispaper and draws some more general conclusions.

2. Requirements for an Analytic-Deliberative Process

Risk managers are faced with a difficult dilemma: On the one hand, technical expertise is a necessary butnot sufficient condition for making prudent decisions on risk. On the other hand, public perceptions areat least partially driven by biases, anecdotal evidence, false assumptions about dose-effect relationships,and sensation (2). There is an additional complication: Neither the experts nor the various groups of thepublic are monolithic blocks, either. Risk managers are faced with a multitude of competing cognitiveclaims, values, and interpretations from experts and public groups alike (3). We live in a pluralist societywith different value systems and worldviews. Who can legitimately claim the right to select the values orpreferences that should guide collective decision making, in particular when the health and lives ofhumans are at stake?

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On the basis of the analyses from theorists of human knowledge and science (see brief reviews in refs8-12), one can draw the following inferences on the required process characteristics that need to be metwhen making complex risk choices:

(a) Regardless of whether one prefers a constructivist or realist perspective on human knowledge aboutrisks (cf. refs 13 and 14), scientific rationality as defined by methodological consensus among riskresearchers is insufficient in making unambiguous and uncontested claims about the characteristics andseverity of the specific risk under investigation (15).

(b) In analyzing risk potentials, one needs to include systematic and anecdotal sources of knowledge(16). Systematic knowledge is necessary to build upon the collected experiences of the past; anecdotalknowledge, to take account of the idiosyncratic features surrounding the specific decision problem.

(c) When contemplating the acceptability of a risk, one needs to be informed about the likelyconsequences of each decision option and to be cognizant of the potential violations of interests andvalues connected with each decision option (17). Although both steps, predicting the likely impacts andevaluating the desirability of each of these consequences, can be separated analytically, it iscounterproductive to separate the two tasks and assign them to different constituents, since the answersof the first task co-determines the answers to the second task and vice versa (12, 12). What is needed isa procedure that integrates both tasks without sacrificing the necessary precision and quality of factualand value judgments that are inherent in both steps.

(d) Integrating values into risk analysis and risk manage ment requires the input of those people whoseinterests and values are affected by the decision options (19). In many instances, these interests andvalues are so obvious that agencies can act on their behalf without major reassurance that their action isin accordance with the needs and concerns of those whom they serve (20). In many risk decisions,however, it is less obvious what is in the best interest of the people, and plural value input is needed toproduce a fair and balanced decision (21). If only interests need to be reconciled, involvement ofstakeholders may suffice; if broad value judgments or issues of social justice are addressed,representatives of the affected public ought to be involved. In both cases such an input requires directparticipation efforts beyond the scope of normal decision making procedures based either on agencyrules or majority votes by a representational branch of government (20, 22).

(e) Participation is not only a normative goal of democracy, it is also a requirement for rational decisionmaking in situations in which evaluating uncertainty is part of the management effort (23). If all society would care about is to reduce the amount of physical harm done to its members, technical expertise andsome form of economic balancing would suffice for effective risk management. However, society is notonly concerned about risk minimization (24). People are willing to suffer harm if they feel it is justifiedor if it serves other goals. At the same time, they may reject even the slightest chance of being hurt ifthey feel the risk is imposed on them or violates their other attitudes and values (25, 26). Context matters. So does procedure of decision making independent of outcome. "Real" consequences arealways mediated through social interpretation and linked with group values and interests. Responsiverisk management needs to incorporate public values into the decision making process.

3. Model of Cooperative Discourse

How can and should risk managers collect public preferences, integrate public input into themanagement process, and assign the appropriate roles to technical experts, stakeholders, and membersof the public? A dialogue among experts, stakeholders, regulators, and the public at large can beorganized in many different forms. Practical experiences have been made with advisory committees,citizen panels, public forums, consensus conferences, formal hearings, and others (27-33: see reviews in refs 29 and 32). Some of these models rely heavily on deliberative forms of communication with littleinput from experts, while others emphasize deliberative processes among experts with little input fromcitizens and stakeholders. This is not the place to discuss these models in detail (see the review in ref

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34). In this article, I would like to focus on one hybrid model of citizen participation that ThomasWebler and I have termed "cooperative discourse" (Figure 1). With several modifications, we haveapplied this model to studies on energy policies and waste disposal issues in Germany, for wastedisposal facilities in Switzerland, and to sludge disposal strategies in the United States (32, 35-40). Themodel entails three consecutive steps:

Figure 1 Basic concept of the cooperative discourse model.

(a) Identification and Selection of Concerns and Evalu ative Criteria. The identification of concerns and objectives is best accomplished by asking all relevant stakeholder groups to reveal theirvalues and'criteria for judging different options. It is crucial that all relevant value groups be representedand that the value clusters be comprehensive and include economic, political, social, cultural, andreligious values. To elicit the values and criteria for such a list, the technique of value-tree analysis hasproven appropriate (41, 42). The resulting output of such a value-tree process is a list of hierarchicallystructured values that represent the concerns of all affected parties.

(b) Identification and Measurement of Impacts and Consequences Related to Different PolicyOptions. The evaluative criteria derived from the value tree are operationalized and transformed intoindicators by the research team or an external expert group. These operational defini tions and indicatorsare reviewed by the participating stakeholder groups. Once approved by all parties, these indicatorsserve as measurement rules for evaluating the performance of each policy option on all valuedimensions. Experts from varying academic disciplines and with diverse perspectives on the topic of thediscourse are asked to judge the performance of each option on each indicator. For this purpose, amodification of the Delphi method has been developed and applied (43). This method is similar to theoriginal Delphi format (44), but based on group interactions instead of written responses. The objectiveis to reconcile conflicts about factual evidence and reach an expert consensus via direct confrontationamong a heterogeneous sample of experts. The desired outcome is a specification of the range ofscientifically plausible and defensible expert judgments and a distribution of these opinions among theexpert community with verbal justifications for opinions that deviate from the median viewpoint.

(c) Conducting a Discourse with Randomly Selected Citizens as Jurors and Representation ofInterest Groups as Witnesses. The last step is the evaluation of potential solutions by one group orseveral groups of randomly selected citizens (45, 46). These panels are given the opportunity to evaluateand design policy options based on the knowledge of the likely consequences and their own values andpreferences. Why do we recommend random selection? First, random selection provides legitimacy tothe process since all potentially affected persons have an equal chance to be drawn into the sample.Second, it provides an opportunity for those people who are normally underrepresented in eitherconventional or activist procedures of collective decision making such as unemployed workers, retiredpersons, or women with small children. Third, the random selection process attracts many persons whohave not made up their mind on the issue under consideration and are thus willing to engage in a mutuallearning process. Last, but not least, the presence of people with nonpolarized views provides acommunicative atmosphere that facilitates mutual understanding and consensus seeking. One should note, however, that only a fraction of those selected by random sampling agree to participate. Theacceptance rate ranges from 5 to 40% depending on the issue in question. The idea of random samplingis not to obtain a true representative image of the population but to provide an equal opportunity to allpeople affected and have them decide whether they want to take advantage of this opportunity or not.The organizers try to assist, however, all those persons who like to participate but have problems doingso (due to working hours, children's care, family restrictions, etc.). In most of our cases we paid

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employers for letting people attend the meetings, provided day care for children, or offered specialfamily services.

Once selected the participants are informed about the options, the evaluative criteria, and theperformance profiles. The representatives of interest groups and the experts take part in the process aswitnesses; they provide their arguments and evidence to the panels who ultimately decide on the variousoptions. This deliberation process takes time: citizen panels are conducted as seminars over 3-5consecutive days if the topic is not too complex, or over a longer period of up to 6 months depending onthe importance and complexity of the topic discussed. All participants are exposed to a standardizedprogram of information, including hearings, lectures, panel discussions, videotapes, and field tours. Themain deliberation process takes place in small groups of up to five persons who reflect the informationinput, discuss the value implications of the material, design new options, and evaluate the potentialimpacts of each option. After these intensive group discussions, all groups reconvene in plenarysessions, exchange their findings, insights, and proposals, and work together on a joint solution. Theprocess is similar to a jury trial with experts and stakeholders as witnesses and advisers on procedure as"professional" judges (cf. ref 30). Once people have accepted their role as "value consultant" and gottenused to the deliberation process, they demonstrate a high degree of commitment. On average, less than1% of the participants drop out because of loosing interest or disenchantment with the process (47).

4. Experiences with the Cooperative Discourse Model

Applications'of the cooperative discourse model in Germany, Switzerland, and the United Statesemerged from the early experiences with citizen panels in urban planning in different German cities andcommunities (48). From the 1970s to today approximately 26 cities or communities used citizen panelsas a method of local planning. More than 2600 adults were involved in these panels for an average of3-5 days each. On the basis of these experiences, the author and several of his colleagues experimentedwith the cooperative discourse method, first in Germany and later in other countries. The followingparagraphs describe several full run large-scale applications in three countries:

(a) The most comprehensive study dealt with the evalu ation of national energy policies in Germany. InAugust 1982, the German Ministry of Research and Technology initiated a large research project toinvestigate the preferences of the German population with respect to four energy policy optionsdeveloped by a parliamentary commission in 1979 (35, 49, 50). The Government was interested in eliciting reliable information on which the energy scenario was most appealing to the population and onwhat basis citizens would evaluate the policy options laid out in each scenario. A research team directedby the author conducted a 3 year study to collect data on public preferences and to analyze themotivations and underlying reasons for the judgment process of evaluat ing the predefined energyscenarios. The study operated with 24 citizen panels (each including approximately 25 participants)drawn from seven communities in different parts of Germany. The panels unanimously rejected ahigh-energy supply scenario and opted for an energy policy that emphasized energy conservation andefficient use of energy. Nuclear energy was perceived as non desirable but-at least for an intermediatetime period-as a necessary energy source. The panelists recommended stricter environmental regulationfor fossil fuels, even if this meant higher energy prices. They developed a priority list for policies anddrafted recommendations for implementing high-priority policies (49).

(b) A regional study was conducted from 1994-1996 in the northern part of the black forest (SouthernGermany). The objective was to have stockholders and citizens take part in planning a wastemanagement program (39, 40). A round table with 16 major stakeholder groups was organized in 1994to develop waste reduction policies and to assess the potential recycling potential of the area (using themethod of value trees). The same group also was asked to find the most suitable technical solution forwaste processing before final disposal. After these decisions were made, 200 randomly selected citizensfrom potential host communities were asked to find the most appropriate site for the types of facilitiesthat had been previously chosen by the representatives of the round table. The most outstanding resultwas that panelists were even willing to approve a siting decision that would affect their own community.

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All ten citizen panels reached a unanimous decision which involved the recom mendation to construct asmall state-of-the-art incinerator in the center of the most populated town within the region. The reasonfor this surprising recommendation was that citizens wanted to present a visual reminder to their fellowcitizens not to forget the need to reduce waste, to burden those who contribute most to the problem, andto put the incinerator near the political power center as a "clever" means, to assure compliance with theenvironmental standards. ("Since the mayor resides right next door to the facility, he will make sure thatnothing harmful will happen"). The decision was given to the regional planning Board which approvedthe recommendations with some minor modifica tions. The responsible county parliaments and the citycouncil of the largest city within the region, however, have been reluctant to accept the recommendationas of now.

(c) In 1992, The Building Department (Baudepartement) of the canton Aargau (Northern part ofSwitzerland) asked the author (at that time affiliated with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) toorganize a cooperative discourse for siting one or several landfills in the eastern part of the canton. Themandate of the research team was to organize a cooperative discourse with four citizen panels. Thesepanels were asked first to develop criteria for comparing the different sites; second, to evaluate thegeological data that were collected during that period; third, to eliminate the sites that should not befurther considered; and fourth, to prioritize the remaining sites with respect to suitability to host a landfill(38, 51). Four citizen panels were formed, each consisting of two representatives from each potentialsite community. With the exception of one community, every town sent eight people to the panels. Not asingle one of these people dropped out during the process. Between January and June 1993 the panelsmet 7-9 times before they attended a workshop of 2 days to come up with the final decision. Allparticipants rated each site on the basis of their self-selected evaluative criteria, their personalimpressions, the written and oral information, and the results of consultations with experts on the basisof a Group Delphi. All four panels composed a list of prioritized sites for the landfill. The mostremarkable outcome was that each panel reached a unanimous decision. In December of 1993, the resultof the participation process was made public. The canton government approved the results and enteredthe next phase of the licensing procedure. As of today, the selected site is still considered but theerection of a landfill has been postponed as the amount of waste has sharply decreased over the past fewyears.

(d) There has been one major attempt to implement the original version of the cooperative discourse inthe United States. [Using randomly selected citizens for policy making and evaluation is not alien to theUnited States. The Jefferson Center in Minneapolis has conducted 14 projects with citizen panels similarto the planning cells (30, 57). Several com munity planners have experimented with citizen panels whichwere composed to reflect a representative sample of the population (cf. ref 63).] In July 1988 the Department of Environmental Protection of New Jersey asked a research team of Clark Universitydirected by the author to apply the model to sewage sludge management problems (36). The objective ofthe project was to give citizens of Hunterdon County, NJ, the opportunity to design the regulatory provisions for an experimental sludge application project on a Rutgers University research farm located inFranklin Town ship (NJ). Although much smaller in scale, the project provided many new insights andexperiences that partially confirmed the European observations and partially documented the need foradjustments to the U.S. political-culture. The citizen panels were conducted on two consecutiveweekends. The desired goal was to elicit recommendations for regulatory provisions that should beincluded in the permit for the land application of sewage sludge on the site in question. The factualissues were discussed in a Group Delphi with eight sludge experts (43). The results of the Delphi werefed into the deliberation process of the panels. The envisioned program for the citizens panel wasradically altered after the participants, in particular the land owners abutting the site, made it clear thatthey rejected the project of land application and that they felt more comfortable conducting their ownmeetings without assistance of a third party. The citizens met several times without the assistance of afacilitator and formulated recommendations that were forwarded to the sponsor (NJ Department ofEnvironmental Protection). In addition to the policy recommendation to reject the proposal of landapplication, the process provided valuable informa tion about citizen concerns and values. Whereas mostof our consulted experts were convinced that citizen concerns focused on issues such as odor, traffic,and contamination of ground water, the value tree analysis of the citizens revealed that their major

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concerns were the expected change of community image from an agricultural community to a "wastedump" and the long-term effects of pollutants on farmland (52).

In summary, the applications of the cooperative discourse method provided some evidence andreconfirmation that the theoretical expectations linked to this method can be met on the local, regional,and also the national level. It is a valid instrument to elicit preferences and educated responses of citizensin a rather short time period. Evaluation studies by independent scholars confirmed that the objectives offairness and competence were met in the Swiss as well as German case studies; i.e., the main interestsand value groups were adequately represented, and the outcomes of the process were judged asreasonable suggestions by technical experts (53-55). The U.S. experience has shown that it is necessaryto have participants design the agenda and the focus of the sessions before the actual meetings takeplace. While participants in Germany and Switzerland were almost grateful and pleasantly surprised thatsomeone made the effort to preplan and structure a procedure for their participation, U.S. citizensdistrust prefabricated participation models and suspect hidden agendas with such an approach (56). The success of public involvement in the United States will depend on securing approval of the process bythe affected constituencies. The social climate of distrust, of government agencies and their contractors ispartly expressed as skepticism toward new procedures. Crosby (57) has therefore suggested holding ameeting with the participants at least 2 weeks before the citizen panels are convened to discuss theprocess, agenda, and informational material and to give the citizens a chance to alter the time frame oragenda.

5. Discussion

The objective of this paper was to address and discuss the need and potential for integrating analysis anddeliberation and to introduce a model of participation that claims to offer a possible solution to meet thisrequirement. Organizing and structuring discourses on risk go beyond the good intention to have thepublic involved in risk decision making. The mere desire to initiate a two-way-communication processand the willingness to listen to public concerns are not sufficient. Discursive processes need a structurethat assures the integration of technical expertise, regulatory requirements, and public values. Thesedifferent inputs should be combined in such a fashion that they contribute to the deliberation process thetype of expertise and knowledge that can claim legitimacy within a rational decision making procedure(58). It does not make sense to replace technical expertise with vague public perceptions nor is itjustified to have the experts insert their own value judgments into what ought to be a democraticprocess.

The much cherished solution of the past has been to have expert panels feed in the facts and havedemocratically elected representatives to reflect these facts on the basis of public values and makeinformed decisions (22, 59). This so called decisionistic model of communication has several majorflaws: The selection of facts relies largely on the choice of concerns, and the value preferences of theelected representatives are at least partially dependent on the knowledge about the likely consequences ofeach decision option. Separating facts from values by division of labor leads to a vicious cycle. Inaddition, uncertainty about consequences, ambiguity of the knowledge base, and dissent among expertsmake it necessary that decision makers interact directly with experts and get an impression of the presentstate of the art. At the same time, those groups and individuals who are exposed to the risk demand thattheir values and preferences are taken into account directly by risk managers without the detour ofactivating the often only remotely affected political representatives (60). These arguments have motivated the recent U.S. Panel on Risk Characterization to advocate an analytic-deliberative approach(1).

Organizing a common platform for mutual exchange of ideas, arguments, and concerns does not suffice,however, in order to assure fair and competent results. Mixing all these knowledge and value sourcesinto one implies the danger that each group trespasses its legitimate boundary of expertise. If perceptionsreplace assessments and the rhetoric of powerful agents replace value input by those who have to bearthe risks, the discourse goes into the wrong direction. An organizational model is needed that assigns

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specific roles to each contributor but makes sure, at the same time, that each contribution is embedded ina dialogue setting that guarantees mutual exchange of arguments and information, provides allparticipants with opportunities to insert and challenge claims, and creates active understanding among allparticipants (5). The model of cooperative discourse is one among other candidates that has beendesigned to meet that challenge. The philosophy behind this model is that citizens, experts, andstakeholders can resolve this dilemma through their respective expertise. Stakeholders are valuablesources for concerns and criteria to evaluate options, since their interests are at stake. Experts are neededto provide technical data and point out relations between options and impacts. Citizens must live with theconsequences and are therefore the best judges to evaluate the decision options. Citizen panels areintended to bring these three perspectives together in a productive fashion.

Based on our experiences in Europe and the United States, it appears that some conditions for using themodel of cooperative discourse are demanded (37, 38).

Variability of Options: The issue must have several feasible options, each with advantages anddisadvantages.

Equity of Exposure: There should be a roughly equal exposure to the disadvantages of these optionsamong the local population.

Personal Experience: Citizens should have enough experience with the issue that they feel confident about learning and discussing decision options.

Openness of Sponsor: The sponsor must be willing to seriously consider the recommendations of thepanel.

Provision of a Supervisory Board Consisting of Major Stakeholders and Decision Makers: Such an advisory or supervisory board facilitates the identification of decision makers with the process, ensuresa fair selection of educational and informational material, assists the organizers in communicating theresults to a wider public, and helps to bridge the gap between the citizens and the policy making bodies.

Our experiments with citizen panels taught us that the process of public involvement is as much an issueof controversy for Americans as is the subject matter itself. The American case study reported above didnot entirely resolve conflicts about values, institutional competence, or scientific facts. However, underdifficult conditions, the process did successfully foster a degree of interactive understanding betweengovernment officials, stakeholders, citizens, and technical experts. This is uncharacteristic of most sitingefforts (61, 62). Citizens did receive the educational component and interviewed scientific experts andpublic officials; they did discuss and express their personal concerns, values, and preferences; and somedecision options were evaluated. Additional case studies are necessary to test the validity of thecooperative discourse in different cultural settings and to further contribute to the design andimplementation of new participatory techniques. Far from being an established planning tool, the methodof cooperative discourse has proven its viability and feasibility in different contexts and constitutes atleast a serious alternative to other forms of public involvement.

* Phone: +49-711-9063-160; fax: +49-711-9063-175; e-mail: renn@ afta-bw.de.

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