Book Review: Behind the Mask: Regulating Health and Safety in Britain’s Off-Shore Oil and Gas Industry
| Date | 01 September 2002 |
| Published date | 01 September 2002 |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466390201100316 |
| Author | Bettina Lange |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
it nor anything in his chapter on (anti-)regulation mentions the four generations
of American intellectuals and academics, beginning with the American Legal
Realists and pragmatists in the 1920s – the name of Robert Hale is one that leaps
to mind, among many others – whose works debunked and conceptually
destroyed the possibility of doing anything other than choosing among regu-
latory regimes. Nor does his argument against first amendment absolutism
mention either remote or recent predecessors, Catherine MacKinnon being one
of the latter.
JOHN PATERSON, Behind the Mask: Regulating Health and Safety in Britain’s Off-
Shore Oil and Gas Industry. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000, ix + 363 pp., £60.00.
This book aims to discover what lies ‘behind the mask’ in the regulation of Britain’s
off-shore oil and gas industry from the 1960s until the present day. The mask is
defined – from a systems theoretical perspective – as the various different codes with
which communicative systems operate in the offshore oil and gas industry. The author
identifies four main communicative systems: politics, engineering, management and
regulation. Behind the mask lie the specific assumptions on the basis of which each
communicative system operates and which can be hidden to the system itself. Hence,
each system has its own rationality. For example, in the political system the percep-
tion developed that too many accidents occurred in the industry and that this should
be addressed through legal instrumental interventions. In contrast, industry manage-
ment worked with a view of reality that was based on an economic code. Interventions
from the political system were perceived as increasing economic risks and hence the
industry responded to political interventions by intensifying and speeding up pro-
duction. This, in turn, led to a vicious circle where health and safety risks were in fact
increased in response to legal regulation because management rationality was based
on an economic code. Similiarly the author describes the rationality of the engineer-
ing system as leading to blind spots because health and safety issues were only raised
as a side effect of the concern for the technical integrity of equipment.
The author examines also in detail the interrelationships between the various com-
municative systems and their rationalities. He analyses in particular how the political
system attempted to intervene through law in the system of management. A familiar
story unfolds here in which legal regulation moved from a highly prescriptive, detailed
approach to a goal-oriented regime which includes elements of self-regulation. The
author ends on a cautiously optimistic note because he detects in the last phase of
health and safety regulation elements of reflexive law. This has the potential to over-
come limits of communication between the different systems. Reflexive law is con-
sidered as the way forward because it draws on processes of social norm production
in the various systems. It encourages reflection, self-criticism and thus learning in the
various social systems. Through the concept of reflexive law the author aims to tran-
scend the limited analytical opportunities presented by the regulation and deregu-
lation dichotomy. Through the detailed analysis of four systems’ rationalities he also
casts a different light on economic and political pressures which have been considered
as key explanatory variables in other accounts of the industry (see for example, W. G.
Carson, 1981, The Other Price of Britain’s Oil: Safety and Control in the North Sea,
Oxford: Martin Robertson). According to Paterson, economic considerations are not
the main motivator of behaviour but they are simply one code that stabilizes the
management system. Profit helps to minimize economic risks in order to enable the
ongoing operation of the system.
BOOK REVIEWS 465
To continue reading
Request your trial