The wind and democracy

Risk management by public institutions operates in an uncomfortable and uncertain space, ranging from reasonable prudence to overreaction aimed solely at protecting themselves from recent setbacks. When the Catalan government decreed preventative measures last week in anticipation of strong winds, some sectors felt it had gone too far: phenomena like that, or even worse, have occurred many times, although never before had such a radical response been taken. Others, however, considered the crisis to have been managed proportionately to the predicted weather threats. The debate, in any case, is not new: it forms part of a deeper question about the legitimate limits of state intervention in protecting citizens.

Political philosophy and ethics have addressed this tension from multiple angles. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) already warned that public power can only limit individual liberty to prevent objective harm to others. Applied to the prevention of natural hazards, this implies that institutions have a duty to act when inaction could lead to serious and foreseeable harm. However, Mill also warned against one—let's say— inertial paternalism which inevitably erodes autonomy and personal responsibility, one of the key axioms of political liberalism. I assure you that rereading the sensible On freedom Mill's analysis, in light of the recent windstorms, could be a worthwhile exercise. I recommend it.

From a philosophical tradition quite different from Mill's, the German philosopher Hans Jonas (1903-1993) formulated a principle of responsibility according to which, in a complex world full of uncertainties, one must act with special caution in the face of potentially catastrophic risks. Jonas argued that when the consequences of an error can be irreversible, as in the case we are discussing, prudence must prevail. This approach justifies strict preventive measures, but also demands transparency and proportionality. In any case, it obscures what Mill precisely emphasizes: personal responsibility and the inalienable nature of freedom. Here, the Valencian philosopher Adela Cortina (1947) offers a perspective that I find relevant. Her ethics of civic responsibility holds that institutions must generate trust, and this is only possible when decisions are perceived as justified, well explained, and coherent (that is, when they are exactly the opposite of those carried out by the ill-fated Mazón). Prevention that seems excessive can erode trust, even when technically defensible. The key is public deliberation: citizens must understand the criteria guiding the measures. However, in an emergency, this seems rather utopian. Furthermore, there are highly technical considerations only accessible to a small number of specialists. Heaven forbid, for example, I pontificate in a know-it-all way about when to open or close the floodgates of a dam (I'm thinking of a cringeworthy spectacle I witnessed recently). Byung-Chul Han (1959) is even more critical, describing some developed countries as societies of fatigue and hyper-prevention. According to him, the obsession with eliminating any Risk can generate a culture of fear that limits and impoverishes collective life. Prevention cannot, ultimately, become a mechanism that infantilizes citizens and makes them increasingly dependent on the paternalistic state.

It would be presumptuous of me to decide whether the measures taken by the Catalan government that we've discussed were appropriate or disproportionate. In any case, I believe that the reasonable limits of institutional prevention should always be defined through a three-pronged approach that considers proportionality, transparency, and shared responsibility. Measures must be appropriate to the actual risk, clearly explained, and acknowledge that security is a shared responsibility between institutions and citizens. If these three elements were truly consistent, perhaps prevention would cease to be perceived as an imposition—or, worse, as a timid attempt to cover one's bases—and could become the expression of a mature, democratic society that accepts both the inevitable existence of risk and the possibility, however partial, of mitigating it.