Questioning Participatory Decision-making by Risk Society

In the industrial society, decision-making makes “forewarned is forearmed” really came true, decision making reflects the pursuit of human planning before action. In the 20th century, with the emergence of management science and the enhancement of people’s management consciousness, the problem of decision-making has been fully studied, and “decision science” has been formed. It has a great positive impact on social development. However, when human beings enter the risk society, whether the existing decision-making methods can still play a role is a problem that must be studied, especially we do not know whether participatory decision-making and deliberative democratic decision-making are still effective. The basic characteristics of risk society is the high complexity and uncertainty of society, actions and decisions are faced with contingencies, and the response time is very urgent, these factors determine that there must be a lack of responsiveness in patterned and procedural decision-making, so that we must seek alternative decision-making methods. Decision making in risk society is a kind of “responsive decision”, which is based on the direct response of risk, crisis events and related comprehensive factors.