Why is Charles Perrow a pessimist about government regulation? Perrow is a leading researcher in the sociology of organizations, and he is a singular expert on accidents and failures. Several of his books are classics in their field — Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies, The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Continue reading

Key to understanding the “ontology of government” is the empirical and theoretical challenge of understanding how organizations work. The activities of government encompass organizations across a wide range of scales, from the local office of the Department of Motor Vehicles (40 employees) to the Department of Defense (861,000 civilian employees). Having the best understanding possible Continue reading

How does government work? We often understand this question as one involving the institutions and actors within the Federal government. But there is a different zone of government and politics that is also very important in public life in the United States, the practical politics and exercise of power at the state and local levels. Continue reading

Crucial to improving an organization’s performance is being able to obtain honest and detailed assessments of its functioning, in normal times and in emergencies. FEMA has had a troubled reputation for faulty performance since the Katrina disaster in 2005, and its performance in response to Hurricane Maria in Louisiana and Puerto Rico was also criticized Continue reading

Serious nuclear accidents are rare but potentially devastating to people, land, and agriculture. (It appears that minor to moderate nuclear accidents are not nearly so rare, as James Mahaffey shows in Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters: From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima.) Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima are disasters that have Continue reading

The recent crashes of two Boeing 737 MAX aircraft raise questions about the safety certification process through which this modified airframe was certified for use by the FAA. Recent accounts of the design and manufacture of the aircraft demonstrate an enormous pressure for speed and great pressure to reduce costs. Attention has focused on a software Continue reading

I am currently writing a book on the topic of the “social ontology of government”. My goal is to provide a short treatment of the social mechanisms and entities that constitute the workings of government. The book will ask some important basic questions: what kind of thing is “government”? (I suggest it is an agglomeration of Continue reading

A recurring theme in recent months in Understanding Society is organizational dysfunction and the organizational causes of technology failure. Helmut Anheier’s volume When Things Go Wrong: Organizational Failures and Breakdowns is highly relevant to this topic, and it makes for very interesting reading. The volume includes contributions by a number of leading scholars in the sociology of organizations.  And Continue reading

Readers may be skeptical about the practical importance of the topic of nuclear power plant siting decisions, since very few new nuclear plants have been proposed or approved in the United States for decades. However, the topic is one for which there is an extensive historical record, and it is a process that illuminates the Continue reading

The possibility or likelihood of conflict of interest is present in virtually all professions and occupations. We expect a researcher, a physician, or a legislator to perform her work according to the highest values and norms of their work (searching for objective knowledge, providing the best care possible for the patient, drafting and supporting legislation Continue reading