A new book is a joy. Hackers are not.

Some of you will have noticed my hiatus in posting lately. It has two imminent causes. I’ve been proofing my new book. And Gmail has blocked my account, due to hacking efforts Google attributes to a foreign government. Regular readers will know the likely culprits. I hardly need mention my other (welcome) obligations. I am reading three doctoral dissertations, I recently trained some Syrians in consensus-building, and I appear almost daily on Al Jazeera Arabic or Al Hurra.

The new book is entitled Strengthening International Regimes: the Case of Radiation Protection. I submitted the manuscript December 31. Palgrave MacMillan will publish it in April. That is very fast for an academic book. I am grateful to everyone involved: the German owner Springer, the British imprint, the New York-based editor, and the copy editing and production crew, which I think works in India. Globalization is not defunct yet.

I regret the $120 price. I don’t expect you to buy it. But please do ask your local or university library to get it.

It took a lifetime

The book is the product of most of my lifetime. I initially wrote about the history of radiation protection for my Princeton doctoral dissertation with Tom Kuhn. That was in the 1970s, but my dissertation only got to 1934. The international regime that protects all of us from ionizing radiation was then still a pre-teen.

I’ve now completed the history more or less to the present, in good time for the 100th anniversary of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) in 2028. What was once an exercise in history of science is now also an exercise in the creation and dissemination of normative regimes. I am fortunate that my own career followed the same trajectory. It gave me tools with which to trace a fascinating history across two disciplines. That is a rare treat.

The crux of the matter

The keystone of the regime for radiation protection is an epistemic community of global experts. They used specialized knowledge to protect both the enterprises using radiation as well as human health and the environment. They have been remarkably successful. The entire world respects the norms they set, even though they lack legal authority. That lack of legal authority has made the norms more resilient, not less.

Their success can teach us something about what makes a regime strong. I argue in the book that the lessons learned may be applicable to other technologies and knowledge-rich subjects that entail both risks and benefits. Balancing them cooperatively rather than in an adversarial process has distinct advantages. The lessons learned may have applications to less knowledge-rich enterprises as well. I explore the possibilities beyond ionizing radiation in the final chapter.

More anon

I’ll have more to say about the book in coming months and will hope to meet some of you in public discussions of mine and related work. If you have suggestions of institutions that might be interested in hosting a discussion, please let me know. I am already trying to arrange something at SAIS and some of the other international affairs institutions with which I am affiliated.

In the meanwhile, I will welcome thoughts on how to liberate my Gmail from the block Google has imposed on it. You can reach me, until the hackers get to it, at dserwer1@jh.edu My Googlevoice number 202 681 7021 is also blocked. Those of you who have it should please use my other number.