Planning for Uncertainty and Risk

Prof. Cuz Potter
Graduate School of International Studies
Korea University
Spring 2013

Course: Planning for Uncertainty and Risk

Contact info

1 Introduction

Every action and every decision incorporates risk and uncertainty. Thus, the formulation of plans, programs, and policies ideally anticipate and address risk and uncertainty. This course serves four primary purposes. First, it introduces and interrogates risk, uncertainty, and related concepts. Second, it conveys the basic quantitative techniques involved in cost-benefit analysis and risk analysis. Third, it compares and contrasts technocratic and democratic approaches to managing risk and uncertainty. Fourth, the course explores the ways in which risk shapes society and society in turn shapes risk. Concrete examples will be drawn from a variety of fields.

To achieve these multiple goals, each class will generally be divided into two portions. The first half will develop the quantitative tools of cost-benefit and risk analysis. The second half will explore theoretical and political issues that inform our definition and analysis of risk.

2 Objectives

By the end of this course, students will be knowledgeable on:

1. Basic quantitative and qualitative procedures for determining risk.
2. Various theoretical approaches to conceptualizing risk.
3. The central tenets and techniques involved in communicative planning/deliberative democracy.

3 Course Requirements

• Great consideration has been given to what readings are assigned. As such, you are expected to have completed all the readings assigned prior to our class meetings. Do not expect that you can complete the readings assigned in one night simply because there are only two chapters or a few articles to read. Most readings are dense and will take time to get through.
• A one-page Reaction Paper (RP) is due electronically by 9am THURSDAY morning each week for 10 out of the 13 weeks for which there are readings. This allows you to choose which weeks to write a reflection paper. The papers will not be graded with a letter grade, but will be allocated from zero to three points depending on how actively your paper engages the material. The paper should usually be 350–500 words (about one page single-spaced). These brief papers are intended to facilitate class discussion in seminar. You can use the Reaction Paper (RP) to ask for clarification about any aspect of the readings you did not fully understand and/or to express an opinion about one or more of the readings. In general, I would advise you to focus the RP on only one of the readings assigned for each week. RPs should be clearly written, spell-checked, and grammatically correct.
• Each week two or three students will hold primary responsibility for coordinating class discussion. Depending on the number of students, this responsibility may fall upon each individual more than once.
• Attendance grades will be calculated as follows: Min(classes attended/(scheduled classes -2)*10,10). The purpose is to allow you to miss three classes for personal reasons without penalty. All absences beyond that must be clearly justified and documented. Beyond this, class participation is strongly encouraged. I would grade on the basis of participation, but I do not wish to penalize students who are naturally reticent. However, you should expect to have your opinions solicited if you do not offer them freely…and nobody enjoys that.
• Two individual research papers will be required. Questions will be assigned during the course of the semester. These papers must explicitly draw on the assigned readings and class discussions. Each paper must be 750–1,250 words long (not including cover pages and bibliographies). Late papers will lose ten points (one letter grade) per day.
• You will also be responsible for editing one of your colleagues’ papers during the middle of the semester.
• There will be two problem sets that cover the quantitative techniques component of the class.
• There will no examinations.

4 Grading

5 Plagiarism

Plagiarism is unacceptable. If plagiarism is detected, you will receive a zero for the given assignment. Please note that plagiarism is much broader than many students realize. You are encouraged to look at this excellent summary of plagiarism from Indiana University (http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/plagiarism.shtml), and you will be held to its standards.

6 Required texts

The following books are available through Kyobo Books or 공문화사. They will also be on reserve at the central library (in both Korean and English if available).

• Ulrich Beck. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Sage Publications Ltd., Thousand Oaks, 1992.
• Frank Fischer. Citizens, Experts, and the Environment: The Politics of Local Knowledge. Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2000.
• John Forester. Planning in the face of power. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1989.
• Charles Yoe. Primer on Risk Analysis: Decision Making under Uncertainty. CRC Press, New York, 2012.
• Nick Hanley and Edward B. Barbier. Pricing Nature: Cost-Benefit Analysis and Environmental Policy. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, Northhampton, 2009.

All other materials will be available electronically through the class website.

You may also want to get a copy of the following book, which I have used to structure much of the first half of the course.

• Deborah Lupton. Risk. Key Ideas. Routledge, New York, 1999.

7 Schedule of Topics and Reading

Module 1: Technical approaches to risk and uncertainty

Week 1 (March 7): Introduction

1. Yoe, chapters 1 and 2.

Week 2 (March 14): Risk management/Introduction to CBA

1. Yoe, chapter 3.
2. Hanley and Barbier, chapter 1.

Week 3 (March 21): Risk analysis/Theoretical foundations of CBA (Problem set I issued.)

1. Yoe, chapter 4.
2. Hanley and Barbier, chapter 2.

Week 4 (March 28): Interrogating the technical approach/Stated preference approach (Problem set I due.)

1. Jürgen Habermas. Toward a rational society: Student protest, science, and politics, chapter Technology and Science as “Ideology”, pages 81–122. Beacon Press, Boston, 1970.
2. Hanley and Barbier, chapter 3.

Module 2: The Risk Society

Week 5 (April 4): Risk society I/Revealed preferences method, the travel cost model

1. Beck, preface and part 1.
2. Hanley and Barbier, chapter 4.

Module 3: Governmentality and risk

Week 6 (April 11): Governmentality/Revealed preference methods, hedonic pricing (Problem set II issued.)

1. Michel Foucault. Governmentality. In Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, editors, The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, pages 87–104. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1991.
2. François Ewald. Insurance and risk. In Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, editors, The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, pages 197–210. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1991.
3. Hanley and Barbier, chapter 5.

Module 4: Deliberative democracy and citizen participation

Week 7 (April 18): Power/Production function approaches (Essay 1 due.)

1. Steven Lukes. Power: A Radical View. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, second edition, 2005. First edition 1974, chapter 1.
2. Hanley and Barbier, chapter 6.

Week 8 (April 25—Exam week)

Week 9 (May 2): Planning in the Face of Power (Edits due.)

1. Forester, parts 1 and 2.
2. Hanley and Barbier, chapter 7.

Week 10 (May 9): Critiques of deliberative democracy (Final draft of essay 1 due.)

1. Iris Marion Young. Activist challenges to deliberative democracy. Political Theory, 29(5):670–690, 2001.
2. Mark Purcell. Resisting neoliberalization: Communicative planning or counter-hegemonic movements? Planning Theory, 8(2):140–165, 2009.
3. Hanley and Barbier, chapter 8.

Week 11 (May 16): Citizens, Experts, and the Environment I (Problem set II due.)

1. Fischer, part 1.

Week 12 (May 23): Citizens, Experts, and the Environment II

1. Fischer, part 2.

Week 13 (May 30): Citizens, Experts, and the Environment III

1. Fischer, part 3.

Week 14 (June 6): No class. 현충일/Memorial Day.

Week 15 (June 13): Citizens, Experts, and the Environment IV

1. Fischer, part 4.
2. Yoe, chapter 5.

Week 16 (June 20): No class. (Final draft of essay 2 due.)