Aaron Wildavsky
Aaron Wildavsky (1930–1993) was an American political scientist renowned for his influential work on public policy, government budgeting, and risk management. Born in Brooklyn, New York, to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants, he graduated from Brooklyn College, served in the U.S. Navy, and earned his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University.
Wildavsky taught at Oberlin College before joining the University of California, Berkeley, where he chaired the political science department and became the founding dean of the Graduate School of Public Policy. His book Politics of the Budgetary Process established him as a scholar of budgeting and introduced the idea that budgets evolve incrementally from previous allocations rather than through rational, comprehensive planning. Next to budgetting, his “dual presidency” theory is a staple in American political thought: U.S. presidents wield greater influence in foreign than domestic policy.
Importantly, beyond these themes, Wildavsky was a pioneering thinker in risk analysis. In Searching for Safety (1988), he argued that societies are safer when they choose adaptability and learning through trial and error rather than excessive precaution.
Wildavsky wrote more than forty books, served as president of the American Political Science Association and was a fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Public Administration.
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In this great talk from 1987, Aaron Wildavsky asked this question and his answer still challenges the common mindset about safety. In his book ππ¦π’π³π€π©πͺπ―π¨ π§π°π³ ππ’π§π¦π΅πΊ that followed one year later, he argued that we shouldn’t just manage safety at the local, technical (micro) level but we must also connect it to how societies govern risk at the macro level. His aim was to help us live with uncertainty instead of being paralysed by it.
Wildavsky noticed the paradox that modern Western societies are the richest, healthiest, and longest-lived in history, though public debates often paint technology and markets as threats. He traced this fear to a change in politics, where health and safety regulation became a way to restrain markets and personal freedom. At the heart of his argument is that good and bad, safety and harm, come as a bundle. Every technology or system has both risks and benefits, and because their effects ripple through complex networks, we can’t simply select safety in advance.
That’s why Wildavsky contrasted two mindsets:
- Trial and error; decentralised learning through small, safe experiments that adapt over time;
- Trial without error; refusing to try anything new unless it’s guaranteed safe.
He warned that the second approach blocks innovation and, ironically, makes society less safe by cutting off the gains that come from learning through experience (opportunity benefits).
Wildavsky also distinguished true unknowns (uncertainty) from known probabilities (risk). When uncertainty dominates, trying to anticipate every possible danger leads to costly false alarms. Instead, societies should build resilience; i.e. the capacity to adapt, recover, and keep functioning when things go wrong.
Markets, he argued, explore the unknown efficiently and spread learning widely. In general, he said: richer is safer, because wealth, knowledge, and information make people more resilient.
His examples:
- Hospitals cause infections but deliver massive net benefits;
- Vaccines carry small risks but save populations;
- Overzealous tort law can deter lifesaving products;
- Chemical scares often ignore the principle that dose and comparison matter;
- Even safety testing can backfire if done poorly.
Wildavsky’s simple rule of thumb:
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Wonderful to see him talk. It's the first time for me!