Hopkins reads Perrow's 1994 garbage-can and power arguments as replacing Normal Accident Theory rather than enhancing it

charles-perrownormal-accident-theorygarbage-can-theoryhopkinsinterpretation

Per Hopkins, Perrow (1994, p. 216) adopts Garbage Can Theory (Cohen, March & Olsen) "to more sharply conceptualise NAT" than his 1984 book did. Hopkins's verdict: "Garbage Can Theory does not refine NAT; it replaces it… It is not tight coupling or complexity which makes disaster inevitable but far more mundane processes of organisational failure."

On p. 217, Hopkins quotes Perrow on group interest and power: "group interests and power pervaded my (1984) book. . . the issue, I argued, was not risk but power; the power of elites to impose risk on the many for the benefit of the few." Hopkins concludes: "Perrow is not sharpening or expanding NAT; he is implicitly abandoning it as a theory of accidents."

Attribution matters here. The quoted Perrow passages are secondhand; the "replacement" reading is Hopkins's interpretation, one layer further out. Perrow's own title for the article, The Limits of Safety: The Enhancement of a Theory of Accidents, frames the move as enhancement. Both readings are on the record and the vault cannot adjudicate between them without the primary. This bears on how the 1984 mechanism in claim-perrow-1984-normal-accident-theory-tight-coupling-complexity is described: as the theory Perrow held in 1984, not necessarily the one he defended in 1994. Compare the scope move in claim-perrow-1994-reply-as-quoted-by-hopkins-disputes-hrt-cases-are-complex-tightly-coupled.