Managing risk, the state and political economy in historical perspective

Abstract

The concept of risk has become increasingly prominent in discussions of security. However, a comparative analysis of the historical context within which different risk regimes emerge alongside transformations in statehood and political economy remains to be undertaken. This article examines three risk management regimes: eighteenth century maritime insurance in which the state had minimal roles; the second, whereby the state shoulders the role of managing the Soviet nuclear threat; the third of the early twenty-first century whereby the state takes on a regulatory role but subcontracts to private actors. We argue that these three ‘regimes’ mirror changes in the underlying political economy and statehood. Unearthing this relationship between different risk management regimes and transformations in statehood and political economy allows for more nuanced understandings of contemporary risk management as being embedded within broader dynamics of power and ideological configurations of state-society-capital relations, rather than merely as a sterile, technical exercise.