Regulating a Moving Nerve: On Legally Defining Critical Infrastructure

TY - JOUR

T1 - Regulating a Moving Nerve

T2 - On Legally Defining Critical Infrastructure

AU - Lauta, Kristian Cedervall

PY - 2015/12/1

Y1 - 2015/12/1

N2 - Regulation of critical infrastructure (CI) is in vogue; and accordingly every government presently develops legal governance regimes. In this paper, I try to analyse some of the present efforts to identify and govern CI. I argue that while the legal definitions introduced contribute little to the actual identification of critical infrastructure, they alter the responsibility and modus operandi of the identification. Political discretion is re-organized into administrative decisions. By relying on similar observations from risk sociology, I set out to criticize the present implementation for masking the hard political choices inherent in the work with CI, and thereby creating a dysfunctional governance regime for the protection of CI.

AB - Regulation of critical infrastructure (CI) is in vogue; and accordingly every government presently develops legal governance regimes. In this paper, I try to analyse some of the present efforts to identify and govern CI. I argue that while the legal definitions introduced contribute little to the actual identification of critical infrastructure, they alter the responsibility and modus operandi of the identification. Political discretion is re-organized into administrative decisions. By relying on similar observations from risk sociology, I set out to criticize the present implementation for masking the hard political choices inherent in the work with CI, and thereby creating a dysfunctional governance regime for the protection of CI.

M3 - Journal article

SN - 1867-299X

VL - 6

SP - 176

EP - 184

JO - European Journal of Risk Regulation

JF - European Journal of Risk Regulation

IS - 2

ER -