Acceptable Risks: Politics, Policy, and Risky Technologies. By C. F. Larry Heimann. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. 188p. $44.50.

Abstract

After a promising start by Martin Landau more than 30 years ago, and advances by a small coterie of mostly Berkeley and Stanford political scientists and organization theorists, the study of organizational reliability has largely been orphaned by American political science. One reason such an important area of research has been given short shrift is that many political scientists do not think of reliability as a subject based in politics. It has been deemed more worthy of the attention of other disciplines, especially engineering and operations research. Another reason is that we have become even more obsessed with transactional efficiencies than was the case when Landau issued his warnings in 1969. Larry Heimann presents a nuanced study on the problem of reliability that incorporates politics, organization, and technology and offers a series of convincing arguments about some reliability paradoxes in policymaking. His book centers on the connec- tion between bureaucratic structure, reliable decision mak- ing, and the incentives public agencies have for responding to risk in one way or another.