Individuals' rationality is not only bounded but also compound.  While dealing with different decision-making processes, people apply different levels of attention and different bases of reasoning.  Sometimes these reasons are in conflict with each other.  Various debates in administrative law are concerning whether there is a unified standard of review to assess the compound reasoning.   Meanwhile, administrative law is facing a shrinking world with more and more unpredictable risks.  Oftentimes, even regulators feel difficult to predict the efficacy of policy tools for economic crash-down, global warming, bird flu diseases, food pollution, or natural catastrophes.  The minimalist's solutions to risk management such as trial-and-error become popular among policymakers but usually result in mass dissatisfaction with the lagging progress of reconstruction.   The inaugural workshop on comparative administrative law invites top thinkers with innovative ideas from various Asian countries to discuss the perennial difficulty of reasonableness with a special focus on regulatory uncertainty in our time.

In this workshop, we would like to explore the complex and uncertain nature embedded in the modern regulatory regimes.  Highly complicated events such as the catastrophic 311 earthquake followed by nuclear crisis in Japan, controversies over the U.S. beef import in Korea, the environmental assessment process of industrial zones in Taiwan, the high-speed rail collisions in China, or the bird flu control issue in Hong Kong, though seemed rare decades ago, appear with ever high frequency and profound impacts in countries in Asia.  In turn, the nature of these events, with their unpredictability, severity and in-depth involvement with scientific knowledge, brings new challenges to traditional pattern of governance.  Since powerful regulatory solutions to these tangled issues are still in their ways, regulatory uncertainty becomes inevitably the future of modern society.

Here we particularly focus on reactions to regulatory uncertainty from administrative law and administrative activities in each nation.  Legal/social theories including "reflexive law," "soft law," "collaborative governance," "democratic experimentalisms," and "responsive regulation," and even more theoretical frameworks are elaborated to capture the dynamics of modern regulatory models.  But we would like to move one step forward to examine the making of regulatory reason and the courts' attitude toward a new model of governance capable of recognizing and even counteracting the possibility of a plunge into chaos.  We also expect to examine how the old debates over legality and reasonableness would shed lights on the new problems elaborated above.  Meanwhile, we would like to inquire into whether or not the traditional model of procedural safeguard could mitigate the downside of regulatory uncertainty.  In addition, we try to reconsider the role of citizen participation and accountability in the era of regulatory uncertainty.  Articles on these important issues or others are all welcome to submission.