Risk Shift: An Institutional Logics Perspective

Abstract

This study uses the concept of institutional logics and the framing processes emanating from these guiding logics to understand how risk is shifted through public policies. The study concludes that Hacker’s argument that public policies have reconstructed markets to aid the privileged by shifting risk onto the less privileged may have underestimated some of the complexities driving the phenomenon, particularly those stemming from actors having to cope with conflicting logics and ambiguity concerning policy solutions to seemingly intractable challenges. Risk shift does not necessarily involve unilateral transfer of risk from policy makers to risk bearers. Risk shift can emerge out of the complex microinteractions among relevant actors and the framing processes guided by competing logics or belief systems in which the collaborating actors are embedded.