Often the definition of disaster is limited to natural events such as major floods, fires, earthquakes or tornadoes. In other cases the definition is extended to man-made disasters like war, transportation accidents and environmental contamination caused by human actions. In contrast, Pat Gray’s and Paul ‘t Hart’s book deals with public policy disasters. What are public policy disasters? In her introduction Pat Gray discusses several definitions of public policy disasters which range from more general approaches – events that involve a considerable loss of control by political authority – to a rather specific notion of ‘policies which have failed against nearly every possible criteria of evaluation, caused considerable disruption which was forseeable and/or avoidable, and triggered complex trails of unitended consequences’ (p. 8).

The eleven chapters clearly reveal that disaster and crisis are related concepts: both are characterized by rapid time sequences, disruption of the usual coping mechanisms, perceptions of threat and helplessness and eventually by major changes in behaviour. Thus, the distinction between a crisis and a disaster may be a matter of degree. Although the editors may disagree, I assume that social theories applying to political crises can apply also to public policy disasters and vice versa. And indeed several contributors seem to prefer the term crisis at least when they refer to failures of institutional co-ordination or deficiencies of political choices. Lode van Outrive for instance in his chapter on ‘The Disastrous Justice System in Belgium’ seems to prefer the term crisis or even fiasco to describe an incredible compound of harmful socio-economic conditions, benign neglect of urgent problems, shortage of opportunities, a poignant lack of material means to function, absence of control and excessive and obscure intrigues resulting from the politicization of the justice system. What he describes is a legitimation crisis of the state caused by insufficient institutions and political negligence.

In their report of a disastrous fight against organized crime in the Netherlands, Mark Bovens and others draw attention to the constructivist concept of public policy disasters. They emphasize that ‘the construction of policy disasters is a highly political activity since it always involves the attribution of accountability and blame’ (p. 40). I am not sure whether this constructivist trait is an exclusive feature of policy disasters as the authors claim. There are specific natural disasters like nuclear radiation or the ozone depletion and global warming that can neither be observed by human senses alone and therefore require the revelation and interpretation of contentious indications as well as unsettled scientific theories. Therefore, the sharp distinction which the authors draw between policy disasters and natural disasters may not be particularly helpful.

Rob Baggot’s most instructive chapter on ‘The BSE Crisis’ emphasizes the importance of inadequate scientific knowledge and the resulting political dispute and stumbling into an intricate policy disaster. The crisis resulted from uncertainties about how BSE and its human equivalent, Creutzfeld–Jacob disease, were related. Hence, the declining public trust in government did not arise from the BSE-crisis as the author ambigously asserts (p. 63), it was rather the main constituent of the BSE-crisis. The loss of political credibility was caused by intra- and international conflicts of interest in the face of blurred political responsibilities and uncertainties about the cause-effect relationship of an epidemic desease. From a historical perspective, threats of epidemic diseases have strengthened or even created political authority. In the BSE-case, however, only the interplay of political opacity in the European policy-making system with a lack of reliable scientific expertise led to a serious legitimation crisis. So I doubt whether the so called ‘risk-society’ is particularly appropriate to describe the undermining of government authority and administration in this case, as the author concludes. I prefer the author’s institutional explanation. The replacement of authoritative government by policy communities and networks of public and private stakeholders within Britan and in the European Union explains much of this policy disaster. Accordingly, the European Parliament’s inquiry into the affair revealed advisory committees and decision-making processes as opaque, complex and anti-democratic.

Robert Sykes raises the question whether the failure of Italian governments to develop or promote the Italian South should be understood as a policy disaster or a political disaster. He concludes that the public policy for southern Italy has to be explained ‘in the context of a crisis of the overall political system in Italy’ (p. 91). In contrast, Wolfgang Seibel’s analysis of the German currency union of 1990 shows that, in this case, political stability and trust in the capacities of a sound political system encouraged a risky strategy. He deduces from the German case, ‘that policy disasters are likely to be facilitated when key actors may anticipate the availability of coping resources designed to mitigate undesirable effects of risky decisions they have to make’ (p. 110). Seibel’s chapter differs from other contributions insofar as, in this case, many experts warned against the disastrous effects whereas politicians consciously took the risk in the hope of sufficient economic and administrative resources to mitigate them. This raises the question whether such a strategy of risk taking combined with the availability of coping responses allows us to speak of a policy disaster any more. Most experts would agree that a currency union of the most divergent economies would cause disastrous economic effects. From a political point of view, the German currency union opened the one and only way to unification and could therefore be called a political success.

Further subjects covered are the ‘Arms to Iraq affair’ (Pat Gray), the defence of the Swedish Crown during the 1992 ERM crisis (Eric Stern and Bengt Sundelius), the European fisheries policy (Ella Ritchie and Anthony Zitho) and the European Community’s foreign and refugee policies towards the conflict in Yugoslavia 1991–95 (Joanne van Selm-Thurburn and Bertjan Verbeck). Mark Bovens, Paul ‘t Hart and B. Guy Peters in their concluding reflections distinguish two dimensions of failure and success. Accordingly, a programme failure can be quite a success in political terms and vice versa. The worst case is given when a major political crisis meets with fundamental programme failures. This is often because of institutional malfunction and awkward political handling of problems. The authors classify the EU Yugoslavia policy, the BSE-Crisis, the Belgian justice system and the Dutch fight against organized crime as failures in both the political and programme dimensions of policy disaster. In contrast, the German currency crisis and the Italian policy in the South are said to have been political successes despite their disastrous policy outcomes.

The book raises some interesting and important questions. Is there a trend towards more and severer public policy disasters? Can policy disasters be explained as a paradoxical by-product of the ongoing institutional complexity and fragmentation of government? Does tighter coupling of social, technical and political systems render programme failures more likely? The different book chapters let us expect such explanations. At the same time they show that public policy disasters are driven by many interrelated factors. Thus, the editors are right to call for future research on this topic.

The book is covered by a simple cardboard and costs one US-dollar per sheet of thematically printed paper. This may be an adequate price for a few outstanding chapters. However 90 dollars seems to be a steep price for the whole book.