Samenvatting

How far should governments go to keep their citizens safe? Not an easy question to answer, but the three books reviewed in this essay provide food for thought on this matter. Power (2004) describes how risk management could become such a dominant feature in today’s society while warning for the danger of risk management being misused to save one’s reputation if things do go wrong. Boutellier (2013) paints a picture of Dutch societal uncertainty and explains how crime became a part of Dutch risk society. According to Boutellier, Dutch government tries to deal with this complexity in an improvising manner. Van Duin, Wijkhuijs, and Jong (2013) present an edited volume of crises and incidents which happened in 2012. Lessons are drawn and warnings given, including the warning that it is impossible to prepare for all possible incidents, let alone plan everything ahead and distil those plans in rules and regulations.