Associate Professor Yuki Hayakawa, of the School of Law and Politics, received an encouragement award from the Public Policy Studies Association Japan for her book, “The Comparative Politics of Environmental Risk Regulations: Chemical Substance Policies in Japan and the EU” (Minerva ShoboLibrary, published in 2018).

　This award is given to articles or books written by promising young researchers. In her book, Prof. Hayakawa looked at chemical substance policies in Japan and the EU from the 1990s onward, and conducted comparative research in an effort to clarify why differences arose in the content of their environmental risk regulations. She theoretically focused on discrepancies in the authority of regulators and differences in instituorganizational layouts, and verified her hypothesis through chemical substance regulation-themed case studies. The Association’s award selection committee praised Prof. Hayakawa’s book for how it examined the kinds of responses that governments showed before shifts in policy issues—from being about the regulation of clear “hazards” with adverse effects, to being about the prevention of unknown “risks”—and the primary factors for those responses, which led to her receiving the award.

　In recent years, chemical substance regulations have had major effects on industry import-export activities, and analyzing previous regulation establishment mechanisms in Japan and overseas is important for considering how to handle new risk regulations. Prof. Hayakawa’s research has hidden potential for being able to make major contributions to solving these issues.