“Floods and pandemics – a socio-legal study of evidence in regulation” researches crisis governance regarding two core challenges societies face: in public health through the risk of pandemics as experienced during Covid-19 and climate change increasing the risk of flooding. This Leverhulme funded project aims to understand if and how regulators tasked with governing these two crises anticipate or consider human compliance and adaptation behaviour when devising regulatory measures. What do regulators want to know before they pass legislation and put regulatory measures in place? What types of evidence are considered?
Interviews will be conducted in Germany and England with relevant stakeholders in government ministries and regulatory agencies. In addition, various public policy documents will be analysed. Drawing from these different data sources allows comparisons between two different legal systems, the multilevel governance of a federal state versus a more centrally organised state, and different institutional identities that shape what evidence is considered. From a discourse-analytical perspective, the project further asks how “risk” and “preparedness” are understood by actors in the field. By answering these questions, the project contributes to core interests of the Regulation and Governance Cluster at the Centre and further deepens methodological conversations between discursive approaches and socio-legal studies.
