Risk, uncertainty and policy: towards a social-dialectical understanding

This editorial introduces a special issue devoted to studies of risk and uncertainty in their relation to policy and policy-making. The special issue comprises a rather diverse collection of six original research articles, each taking up a distinct perspective in scrutinising interfaces between policy, risk and uncertainty. The purpose of this editorial is to present some broader themes in the literature before moving on to sketch out a basic model for dialectically connecting risk and uncertainty to policy, as a basis for relating the respective insights which emerge within the six empirical articles. The editorial concludes with an overview of these six studies which appear in the special issue.