Behind the Mask

John Paterson is Reader in Law at the School of Law, University of Westminster, London, UK. He trained as a solicitor in the Office of the Solicitor to the Secretary of State for Scotland and holds a PhD from the European University Institute, Florence, Italy. He worked previously at the Centre de Philosophie du Droit, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium and is co-editor (with Olivier De Schutter and Notis Lebessis) of Governance in the European Union, Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2001. He has acted as a consultant for the European Commission's Forward Studies Unit and the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency, and has published in the fields of risk regulation, corporate governance and legal theory.

'Through the detailed analysis of four systems' rationalities [this work] casts a different light on economic and political pressures which have been considered as key explanatory variables in other accounts of the industry...one of the strengths of this research monograph is that it addresses both theoretical as well as policy issues in an area of activity in which regulation is of vital concern...The most significant contribution of the study lies in its pioneering methodological approach...[It] makes an important contribution to what so far is only a small field of empirical studies from a systems theoretical perspective.' Social and Legal Studies

• Contents: Regulating and evaluating; Mapping a new approach; A long decade of determinism; The road to a new rationality; Reflexivity and risk; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.