THE IDEA BEHIND THIS book originated during the 2000–2001 academic year, which I spent on sabbatical in France. The almost daily media accounts of new food safety scares and the haste with which French politicians were competing with one another to propose ever more risk-averse regulations to address them made me feel as if I was in a time warp. I felt I was back in the United States during 1970, when President Richard Nixon and Democratic presidential aspirant Senator Edward Muskie of Maine had competed with each other over who was a stronger supporter of stringent emissions standards for motor vehicles. Living in Europe for a year made me more aware of the extent to which the salience of health, safety, and environmental risks had declined in the United States during the previous decade. This was in marked contrast to France, where Parisians, faced with renewed outbreaks of mad-cow and foot and mouth disease, were now asking each other, “what did your dinner have for dinner?” rather than asking, “what did you have for dinner?”
In 2003, I published an article in the British Journal of Political Science and a lengthier essay in the Yearbook of European Environmental Law that described how and explained why the politics of consumer and environmental risk regulation had changed on both sides of the Atlantic.1 In the fall of 2004, Chuck Myers, the political science editor at Princeton University Press, invited me to expand these essays into a book. Its completion has been considerably delayed by three other projects: a book and several essays and articles on corporate social responsibility, a co-edited volume on food safety regulation in Europe, and a co-edited volume on transatlantic regulatory cooperation. But this delay has proved fortuitous. It has enabled me to draw on a considerable body of research published in the interval as well as more recent political and policy developments.
The subject of risk regulation is highly contentious. Reasonable people can and do disagree about which health, safety, and environmental risks are credible and which risks governments should try to prevent or ameliorate. But this book is a work of analysis, not advocacy. Like any informed citizen, I have my own views, but this book does not attempt to argue or demonstrate which or whose risk regulations are “better” or “ill-informed.” More stringent regulations may or may not be welfare-enhancing, and governments can err by regulating too little as well as too much. I have tried to describe and explain each of the risk regulations adopted—or not adopted—on either side of the Atlantic as fairly and objectively as possible. I leave it up to the reader to decide which particular risk regulations he or she considers salutary or unwarranted.
I am pleased to acknowledge a debt to several colleagues and friends, both at Berkeley and elsewhere, who took the time to read all or significant portions of various drafts of this manuscript and offer me the benefits of their comments and criticisms. The suggestions of Bob Kagan, Graham Wilson, Dan Kelemen, Tim Büthe, Sean Gailmard, Robert Falkner, Brendon Swedlow, Jonathan Wiener, Robert Van Houweling, Mark Pollack, Paul Pierson, Henrik Selin, Albert Alemanno, and Jonathan Zeitlin, along with the anonymous reviewers for Princeton University Press, and my editor at Princeton University Press, Chuck Myers, have made this a much better book than I could have written without their assistance. Needless to say, none of these individuals bears any responsibility for the final product.
Sections of this book draw on my previous research on consumer and environmental regulation, including National Styles of Regulation: Environmental Policy in Great Britain and the United States; Fluctuating Fortunes: The Political Power of Business in America; Trading Up: Consumer and Environmental Regulation in A Global Economy; “The Globalization of Pharmaceutical Regulation”; and “Trade and Environment in the Global Economy: Contrasting European and American Perspectives.”2 I also have used material from essays and articles I co-authored with Dan Kelemen, Michael Toffel, Diahanna Post, Nazli Uldere Aargon, Jabril Bensedrine, Ragner Lofstedt, and Olivier Cadot, as well as from two books I co-edited: What’s The Beef? The Contested Governance of Food Safety, with Chris Ansell, and Transatlantic Regulatory Cooperation: The Shifting Roles of the EU, the US, and California, with Johan Swinnen.3
I benefited from the opportunity to present my analysis to seminars at the Haas School of Business and the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, Boston University, the London School of Economics, the University of Michigan, Duke University, and Kings College, London.
In discussing the findings of this book to students and policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic, I was often struck by how many were unaware that during the three decades prior to around 1990, it was the United States that was more likely to adopt more stringent, innovative, and comprehensive regulations for addressing a wide range of national and global health, safety, and environmental risks than were most European governments and the European Community. I hope that this book contributes to a more informed understanding of regulatory policymaking on both sides of the Atlantic during the previous five decades.
Financial support for this project was generously provided by the Solomon P. Lee Chair at the Haas School of Business and the Committee on Research of the University of California, Berkeley. I have been privileged to spend my career at a university that has been so supportive of my research.
This book could not have been completed without the extraordinary research assistance of Victoria Kinsley. In addition to helping me collect research materials and put my references in order, she edited several drafts of each chapter. Karin Edwards prepared a number of research memos at the inception of this project, and Sanaz Mobasseri provided important research assistance. Peter Ryan ably assisted me in editing, and substantially improving, the manuscript, and Karen Verde did an outstanding job editing the final draft.
As always, my greatest debt is to my wife Virginia, whose patience and encouragement provided me with the time and emotional support that made the writing of this book possible. Both of us are relieved by its completion.
I am delighted to dedicate this book to my twin grandsons, Max and Alex Girerd, who, because they were smart enough to be born to an American mother and a French father, enjoy citizenship on both sides of the Atlantic. One of my goals was to finish this book before they were able to read it, an objective which I have achieved. But I suspect it will be several years before they find it of interest, because, like Grandpa’s other books, it has no pictures of trucks or animals—though it does discuss regulations that affect both.
In closing, my most heartfelt thoughts and deepest appreciation are for the tireless support and encouragement of my beloved son, Philip. I miss him more than words can ever say.
1 “The Hare and the Tortoise Revisited: The New Politics of Consumer and Environmental Regulation in Europe,” British Journal of Political Science 33, part 4 (October 2003): 557–80. Reprinted in Environmental Risk, vol. 2, ed. John Applegate (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004) 481–504; Andrew Jordan, ed., Environmental Policy in the European Union, 2d ed. (London and Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2005), 225–52; Cary Coglianese and Robert Kagan, eds., Regulation and Regulatory Processes (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), 101–26; Martin Levin and Martin Shapiro, eds., Transtlantic Policymaking in an Age of Austerity (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004), 177–20. “Risk Regulation in Europe and the US,” in The Yearbook of European Environmental Law, vol. 3, ed. H. Somsen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 1–42.
2 National Styles of Regulation: Environmental Policy in Great Britain and the United States (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986); Fluctuating Fortunes: The Political Power of Business in America (New York: Basic Books, 1989); Trading Up: Consumer and Environmental Regulation in a Global Economy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995); “The Globalization of Pharmaceutical Regulation,” Governance 11, 1 (January 1998): 1–22; Barriers or Benefits? Regulation in Transaltantic Trade (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1997); “Trade and Environment in the Global Economy: Contrasting European and American Perspectives,” in Green Giants? Environmental Policy of the United States and the European Union, ed. Norman Vig and Michael Fauve (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 231–52.
3 “Trading Places: The Role of the US and the EU in International Environmental Treaties” (with R. Dan Keleman), Comparative Political Studies 43, 4 (April 2010): 427–56; “Environmental Federalism in the European Union and the United States” (with Michael Toffel, Diahanna Post, and Naxli Z. Uludere Aragon), A Handbook of Globalization and Environmental Policy: National Government Interventions in a Global Arena, ed. Frank Wiken, Kees Zoeteman, and Joan Peters (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2011); “Comparing Risk Regulation in the United States and France: Asbestos, AIDS and Genetically Modified Agriculture” (with Jabril Bensedrine), French Politics, Culture & Society 20 (Spring 2002): 13–32; “The Changing Character of Regulation: A Comparison of Europe and the United States” (with Ragnar Lofstedt), Risk Analysis 21, no. 3 (2001): 399–416; “France, the United States, and the Biotechnology Dispute” (with Oliver Cadot), Foreign Policy Studies, Brookings Institution (January 2001); What’s the Beef? The Contested Governance of European Food Safety (co-editor Chris Ansell) (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006); and Transatlantic Regulatory Cooperation: The Shifting Roles of the EU, the US and California (co-editor Johan Swinnen) (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2011).