Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest: Anti-Nuclear Movements in Four Democracies

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 16, Issue 1, 1986, Pages 57-85

  Kitschelt, Herbert P ^a  

^a DUKE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84965444516     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S000712340000380X     Document Type: Article

References (136)

1. The non-theoretical literature includes several useful handbooks, written by anti-nuclear activists, about the development of nuclear power conflicts in a number of countries, as well as several descriptively rich comparative analyses written by academic observers. Representative handbooks include: Projektbereich Ökologie der Vereinigten deutschen Studentenschaft, Bochum, Atomenergie International: Atomprogramme und Wilderstand in 28 Ländern (Bochum: Druckladen, 1978);
2. Anna Gyorgy and friends, No Nukes: Everyone's Guide to Nuclear Power (Boston: South End Press, 1979);
3. Lutz Mez, ed., Der Atomkonflikt (West Berlin: Olle und Wolters, 1979).
4. Representative academic analyses include: John Surrey and Charlotte Huggett, ‘Opposition to Nuclear Power: A Review of International Experience', Energy Policy, 4 (1976), 286–307;
5. Dorothy Nelkin and Michael Pollak, ‘The Politics of Participation and the Nuclear Debate in Sweden, the Netherlands, and Austria', Public Policy, xxv (1977), 333–57;
6. also ‘The Political Parties and the Nuclear Energy Debate in France and Germany', Comparative Politics, xii (1980), 127–41;
7. also The Atom Besieged: Extraparliamentary Dissent in France and Germany (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981);
8. Jim Falk, Global Fission: The Battle Over Nuclear Power (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1982).
9. Societal impacts of social movements are a concern of the following recent literature: William Gamson, The Strategy of Social Protest (Homewood, IL: Dorsey, 1975);
10. Gary Marx and James Wood, ‘Strands of Theory and Research in Collective Behavior', Annual Review of Sociology, 1 (1975), 363–428;
11. Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (New York: Pantheon, 1979);
12. Ted Robert Gurr, ‘On the Outcomes of Violent Conflict', in Ted Robert Gurr, ed., Handbook of Political Conflict (New York: Free Press, 1980), pp. 238–94;
13. Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982);
14. Sidney Tarrow, Social Movements: Resource Mobilization and Reform During Cycles of Protest: A Bibliographic and Critical Essay, Western Societies Program, Occasional Paper No. 15, Center for International Studies (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1982).
15. Key contributions to this perspective include: Alain Touraine, The Self-Production of Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), Chap. 6;
16. Alain Touraine, The Voice and the Eye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981);
17. Alain Touraine, Zsuza Hegedus, François Dubet and Michel Wieviorka, La Prophétie Anti-Nucléaire (Paris: Edition du Seuil, 1980);
18. Alberto Melucci, ‘The New Social Movements: A Theoretical Approach', Social Science Information, xix (1980), 199–226;
19. Jürgen Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, Volumes 1 and 2 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1981);
20. Klaus Eder, ‘A New Social Movement?', Telos, 52 (1982), 5–20;
21. Claus Offe, ‘New Social Movements as a Meta-Political Challenge' (unpublished paper, Universitat Bielefeld, June 1983).
22. A critical review of the literature is found in Jean Cohen, ‘Between Crisis Management and Social Movements: The Place of Institutional Reform', Telos, lii (1982), 21–40.
23. This perspective is labelled as ‘Durkheimian' in Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1978).
24. It has been adopted and refined by authors as diverse as the structural-functionalist Neil Smelser in Theory of Collective Behavior (New York: Free Press, 1962)
25. the behavioralist Ted Robert Gurr in Why Men Rebel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970).
26. Critical assessments of the relative deprivation perspective are found in Michael Useem, Protest Movements in America (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1975)
27. J. Craig Jenkins, ‘Sociopolitical Movements', in Samuel R. Long, ed., The Handbook of Political Behavior, Vol. 4 (New York: Plenum Press, 1981).
28. Early critics of the social strain and relative deprivation theories rejected their validity out of hand, but some contemporary critics accept the intensification of grievances as one of several determinants of social movement mobilization. For example, see E. J. Walsh, ‘Resource Mobilization and Citizen protest in Communities Around Three Mile Island', Social Problems, xxix (1981), 1–21;
29. Harold R. Kerbo, ‘Movements of “Crisis” and Movements of “Affluence”: A Critique of Deprivation and Resource Mobilization Theories', Journal of Conflict Resolution, xxvi (1982), 645–63;
30. Keith Webb, et al., ‘Etiology and Outcomes of Protest: New European Perspectives', American Behavioral Scientist, xxvi (1983), 311–31.
31. Key contributions to the resource mobilization perspective are Anthony Obserschall, Social Conflict and Social Movements (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1973);
32. William Gamson, The Strategy of Social Protest (Homewood, IL: Dorsey, 1975);
33. John D. McCarthy and Mayer Zald, ‘Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory', American Journal of Sociology, Lxxxii (1977), 1212–41.
34. McCarthy and Zald, ‘Resource Mobilization and Social Movements', p. 1236, for instance simply state that they have assumed the ‘modern American context' for their theory.
35. But the institutional context is, as Piven and Cloward, pp. 15–37, point out, an important determinant of movement mobilization that may vary. A greater emphasis on external political opportunity structures is found in some of the recent social movement research.
36. See McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency;
37. Tarrow, Social Movements;
38. Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution, Chap. 4.
39. If the paper focused on the explanation of early nuclear power conflicts, a more disaggregate level of analysis would have been in order: site-specific variables, such as the absence or presence of other industrial polluters, including nuclear ones, at a prospective plant site; patterns of rural settlement; fiscal side-payments to communities willing to host nuclear facilities; and the secretiveness of decision-making among local political and economic elites have been found to be reliable predictors of protest in numerous case studies. For France, see Didier Anger, Cronique d'une lutte: le combat anti-nucléaire à Flamanville et dans La Hague (without location: Jean-Claude Simoen, 1977);
40. Phillipe Garraud, ‘Politique électro-nucléaire et mobilisation: la tentative de constitution d'enjeu', Revue française de science politique, xxix (1979), 448–74;
41. Thierry Jund, Le Nucléaire contre l'Alsace (Paris: Syros, 1977);
42. N. J. D. Lucas, Energy in France: Planning, Politics and Policy (London: Europa Publications, 1979), pp. 188–212;
43. Alexandre Nicolon, ‘Analyse d'une opposition a un site nucléaire', pp. 79–159 in Francis Fagnani and Alexandre Nicolon, Nucléopolis: materiaux pour l'analyse d'une société nucléaire (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1979).
44. For Sweden, see Lennart Daleus, ‘A Moratorium in Name Only', Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, xxxi (1975), 27–33.
45. For the United States see Lynton Caldwell, Lynton Hayes, and Isabel MacWhirter, Citizens and the Environment: Case Studies in Popular Action (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1976), Chaps. 3, 6, 7 and 8;
46. Steven del Sesto, Science, Politics and Controversy: Civilian Nuclear Power in the United States, 1947–1974 (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1979), Chap. 6;
47. Stephen Ebbin and Raphael Kasper, Citizen Groups and the Nuclear Power Controversy: Uses of Scientific and Technical Information (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1974);
48. Gyorgy et al., No Nukes;
49. Robert E. Kasperson et al., ‘Public Opposition to Nuclear Energy: Retrospect and Prospect', Science, Technology and Human Values, 5 (1980), 11–23;
50. Dorothy Nelkin, Nuclear Power and Its Critics: The Cayuga Lake Controversy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971).
51. For West Germany, see Battelle Institut, Bürgerinitiativen im Bereich von Kernkraftwerken (Bonn: Bundesministerium für Forschung und Technologie, 1975);
52. Herbert Kitschelt, Kernenergiepolitik: Arena eines gesellschaftlichen Konflikts (Frankfurt: Campus, 1980), Chaps. 5.2 and 5.4;
53. Dieter Rucht, Von Whyl nach Gorleben: Burger gegen Atomprogramm und nukleare Entsorgung (Munich: Beck, 1980);
54. Joachim Schritt, Bauern gegen Atomanlagen (Offenbach: Verlag 2000, 1977).
55. The alliances of pro-nuclear interests were very similar in all four countries during the early stages of the nuclear power debate. However, the reasons why these clusters of industrial and administrative interests are the logical outcome of nuclear technology development in the countries compared here are discussed in Herbert Kitschelt, ‘Structures and Sequences of Nuclear Energy Policy-Making: Suggestions for a Comparative Perspective', Political Power and Social Theory, 2 (1982), 271–308.
56. The concept of political opportunity structure is used here in a broader sense than that conveyed by ‘state structure', a concept that has been used, and criticized, in recent discussions in the field of comparative public policy. See John Zysman, Governments, Markets and Growth (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), pp. 291–300 and 347–9.
57. Opportunity structure encompasses the concept of ‘dominant policy style'. The latter is developed for a number of countries in Jeremy Richardson, ed., Policy Styles in Western Europe (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982).
58. A recent analysis in this vein of labour movements is found in Peter Lange, George Ross and Maurizio Vannizelli, Unions, Change and Crisis: French and Italian Union Strategy and the Political Economy, 1945–1980 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982).
59. The concepts of movement cycles and reform cycles are developed in Tarrow, Social Movements, pp. 35–46.
60. Structures are those processes in a system that change at a rate so slow as to be fixed for the study of events that transpire over a short period of time. See Karl Deutsch, ‘The Crisis of the State', Government and Opposition, xvi (1981), 331–41, at p. 332.
61. The distinction drawn between open and closed opportunity structures is used in Peter K. Eisinger, ‘The Conditions of Protest Behavior in American Cities', American Political Science Review, Lxvii (1973), 11–28.
62. This term is used in Judith May and Aaron Wildavsky, eds, The Policy Cycle (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1978) to describe public policy processes in terms of steps and stages.
63. This point is frequently stressed in implementation research. See Eugene Bardach, The Implementation Game (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977).
64. Useful analyses of the French political system are found in Philip G. Cerny and Martin A. Schain, eds, French Politics and Public Policy (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980);
65. William Andrews and Stanley Hoffman, eds, The Fifth Republic at Twenty (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1981);
66. Stephen Cohen and Peter Gourevitch, eds., France in a Troubled World Economy (London: Butterworth Scientific, 1982);
67. Douglas Ashford, Policy and Politics in France (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1982).
68. Compare, for the assimilation of Swedish movements in the late 1960s, Olof Ruin, ‘Participatory Democracy and Corporatism: The Case of Sweden', Scandanavian Political Studies, 9 (1974), 171–84.
69. Early socio-economic reforms and a better representation of women in politics have even pre-empted a strong women's movement in Sweden. Compare: Maud Edwards, ‘Sweden', in Joni Lovenduski and Jill Hills, eds. The Politics of the Second Electorate: Women and Public Participation (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul), pp. 208–27;
70. Hilda Scott, Sweden's ‘Right to Be Human': Sex Role Equality: The Goal and the Reality (Avondale, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1982).
71. For Sweden, see Neil Elder, Government in Sweden: The Executive at Work (Oxford: Pergamon, 1970);
72. M. Donald Hancock, Sweden: The Politics of Postindustrial Change (Hinsdale, IL: The Dryden Press, 1972);
73. Thomas J. Anton, Administered Politics: Elite Political Culture in Sweden (Boston: Nijhoff, 1980).
74. Several works note a marked decline in Sweden's capacity to build consensus and implement public policy. As similar trends also have been observed in other countries, the distance between the predominant Swedish ‘policy style' and other regimes, nevertheless, may not have disappeared. See Gunnel Gustafsson and Jeremy Richardson, ‘Concepts of Rationality and the Policy Process', European Journal of Political Research, vii (1979), 415–36;
75. Olof Ruin, ‘Sweden in the 1970s: Policy-making Becomes More Difficult', in Richardson, ed., Policy Styles in Western Europe, pp. 141–67;
76. Neil Elder, Alastair H. Thomas and David Arter, The Consensual Democracies? (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1982).
77. For the American political system, see Walter Dean Burnham, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York: Norton, 1971);
78. Harold Seidman, Politics, Position and Power: The Dynamics of Federal Organization, 2nd edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975);
79. Anthony King, ed., The New American Political System (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1978);
80. James Sundquist, The Decline and Resurgence of Congress (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1981).
81. Useful analyses of policy-making in West Germany are found in Renate Mayntz and Fritz Scharpf, Policy-Making in the German Federal Bureaucracy (New York: Elsevier, 1975);
82. David Conradt, The German Polity, 2nd edn (New York: Longman, 1982);
83. Kenneth Dyson, ‘West Germany: The Search for a Rationalist Consensus', in Richardson, ed., Policy Styles in Western Europe, pp. 16–46.
84. Gamson, The Strategy of Protest, Chap. 3, introduced the important distinction between procedural and substantive impacts or ‘gains' of movements, but omitted structural impacts on the political regimes themselves.
85. In addition to those listed in fn. 2, detailed analyses of the nuclear power conflict in the United States are found in: Dorothy Nelkin and Susan Fallows, ‘The Evolution of the Nuclear Debate: The Role of Public Participation', Annual Review of Energy, iii (1978), 275–312;
86. Jerome Price, The Anti-nuclear Movement (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982).
87. For the Swedish nuclear controversy, see Daleus, ‘A Moratorium in Name Only';
88. Nelkin and Pollak, ‘The Politics of Participation'; Dean Abrahamson, ‘Governments Fall as Consensus Gives Way to Debate', Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, xxxv (1979), 30–37
89. Ann-Marie Westmann, ‘Schweden, Wohfahrtsstaat am Scheideweg', in Mez, Der Atomkonflikt, pp. 229–40;
90. Hans Zetterberg, The Swedish Public and Nuclear Energy: The Referendum of 1980 (Tokyo: United Nations University, 1980).
91. The role of political parties in West German and French nuclear power controversies is analysed in Alexandre Nicolon and Marie-Josephe Carrieu, ‘Les parties face au nucléaire et la contestation', in Fagnani and Nicolson, Nucléopolis, pp. 79–159;
92. Nelkin and Pollak, ‘The Political Parties and the Nuclear Energy Debate in France and Germany';
93. Kitschelt, Kernenergiepolitik, Chap. 5.5.
94. For the United States, see Ebbin and Kasper, Citizen Groups and the Nuclear Power Controversy',
95. Elizabeth S. Rolph, Nuclear Power and the Public Safety: A Study in Regulation (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1979).
96. For West Germany, see Kitschelt, Kernenergiepolitik, Chap. 4.
97. Licensing procedures in the United States, West Germany, France and Sweden are compared in Lutz Hoffmann et al., Faktoren der Standortwahl für Kernkraftwerke in ausgewählten Industriestaaten (Bonn: Bundesministerium für Raumordnung, 1978).
98. The role of litigation in West German and American anti-nuclear activities is discussed in Constance Ewing Cook, Nuclear Power and Legal Advocacy: The Environmentalists and the Courts (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1980);
99. Kitschelt, Kernenergiepolitik, Chap. 54;
100. Nelkin and Pollack, The Atom Besieged, Chap. 11.
101. The effectiveness of litigation and the importance of the courts in the anti-nuclear movement's strategy has sometimes been overestimated, e.g., by Nelkin and Pollack, The Atom Besieged.
102. There is not a single instance in either country where appeals courts have permanently revoked nuclear construction or operation licences. A discussion of the limits of the litigation strategy and the disillusionment it brings appears in Herbert Kitschelt, ‘Justizapparate als Konflikt-lösungsinstanz?' Demokratie und Recht, vii (January 1979), 3–22;
103. Lettie McSpadden-Wenner, ‘Energy Environmental Trade-Offs in the Courts: Nuclear and Fossil Fuels', Regina Axelrod, ed., Environment, Energy, Public Policy (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1981), pp. 81–109.
104. The French licensing procedure is discussed in Jean-Marie Colson, Le Nucléaire sans les Français: Qui decide? Qui profile? (Paris: Maspero, 1977), pp. 101ff.
105. The Seabrook controversy is discussed in Steven Barkan, ‘Strategic, Tactical and Organizational Dilemmas of the Protest Movement Against Nuclear Energy', Social Problems, xxvii (1979), 19–37;
106. Harvey Wasserman, Energy War: Reports from the Front (New York: Lawrence Hill, 1979).
107. Survey questions have been manipulated so as to create a virtual ‘politics of nuclear polling', with advocates and opponents of nuclear power using the surveys most favourable to their own position. This is discussed in Otwin Renn, Kernenergie aus der Sicht der Bevölkerung (Jülich: Kernforschungsanlage Jülich, 1977), pp. 47–9.
108. The concept of the ‘issue attention cycle' for social movements is developed in Anthony Downs, ‘Up and Down with Ecology: The “Issue Attention Cycle'”, Public Interest, xxviii (1972), 38–50.
109. For opinion surveys about nuclear energy issues, see Gerard Duménil, ‘Energie nucléaire et opinion publique', pp. 317–74 in Fagnani and Nicolon, Nucléopolis (France);
110. Barbara Farah et al., Public Opinion About Energy: A Literature Review (Golden, CO: Solar Energy Research Institute, 1979) (United States);
111. Renn, Kernenergie aus der Sicht der Bevölkerung and Wahrnehmung und Akzeptanz technischer Risiken (Jülich: Kernforschungslage Jülich, 1981) (Germany);
112. Hans Zetterberg, The Swedish Public and Nuclear Energy (Sweden).
113. It has also been argued that weakness of a nation's energy sector, above all the absence of strong oil companies, explains why governments protect nuclear and other energy policies more from movement challenges than do countries with strong, indigenous energy industries. For this argument, see Peter Gourevitch, The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of Domestic Politics', International Organization, xxxii (1978), 881–911, esp. p. 906. At first blush, this model seems to explain the differences between France and the United States. The weak French energy sector requires firm government support, whereas the United States can afford a more pluralist style because its energy sector is strong and can fight for itself. The model fails to explain, however, why west Germany and Sweden, each with comparatively weak energy industries, were unable to imitate the French strategy and, instead, retreated, each in its own particular way, from an all-out, long-term commitment to nuclear power.
114. The new Socialist government allowed consultative local referendums on nuclear power projects. But this provision was far less sweeping than it sounds, for referendums may be overruled by decisions of regional political bodies, and the reform was accompanied by government and electric utility threats of economic hardship for uncooperative regions. The licensing reform by the Socialist government is described in M. Rappin, ‘Dezentralisierung des französischen Genehmigungverfahrens', Atomwirtschaft-Atomteclmik, xxvii (1982), 39–41.
115. For the litigation initiated by French anti-nuclear activists, see Colson, Le Nucléaire sans les Français, pp. 139–50,
116. Nelkin and Pollak, The Atom Besieged, Chap. 11.
117. The politicaldynamics of this commission are analysed in Herbert Kitschelt, ‘Der Zwischenbericht der Enquete-Kommission “Zukunftige Kernenergiepolitik”: Stagnation oder Innovation in der politischen Ökonomie des westdeutschen Energiesektors?' Jarhbuch Technik und Gesellschaft, 1(1982), 165–91.
118. There are several overviews of American nuclear energy policy that place it in the more comprehensive setting of American energy policy: Irwin C. Bupp and Jean-Claude Derian, Light Water: How the Nuclear Dream Dissolved (New York: Basic Books, 1978), Chaps. 8 and 10;
119. Walter Rosenbaum, Energy, Politics and Public Policy (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1981);
120. John Chubb, Interest Groups and the Bureaucracy: The Politics of Energy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1983), Chaps. 4 and 6.
121. Compare Nelkin and Pollak, The Politics of Participation'.
122. These financial difficulties are discussed in Stephen Cohen, ‘Informed Bewilderment: French Economic Strategy and the Crisis', in Cohen and Gourevitch, France in a Troubled World Economy, pp. 21–48;
123. Herbert Kitschelt, Politik und Energie: Energie-Technologiepolitiken in den USA, der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Frankreich und Schweden (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1983), pp. 249–51.
124. This process was accompanied by increasing outlays for nuclear safety research that led to further regulatory requirements and delays of nuclear power plants. See Barry Weingast, ‘Congress, Regulation and the Decline of Nuclear Power', Public Policy, xxviii (1980), 231–55.
125. For a more detailed analysis of energy conservation policies, compare: international Energy Agency, Energy Conservation: The Role of Demand Management in the 1980s (Paris: OECD, 1981), and Kitschelt, Politik und Energie, Chap. 4.1.
126. See Lucas, Energy in France, pp. 152–6.
127. An instructive analysis of the budget decisions for solar energy by the US Congress is provided by W. Henry Lambright and Albert Teich, ‘Policy Innovation in Federal Research and Development: The Case of Energy Research and Development', Public Administration Review, ixl (1979), 140–7.
128. A detailed comparative analysis of the formation and implementation of energy technology policies can be found in Kitschelt, Politik und Energie, Chap. 6.
129. An assessment of the world energy situation after the second oil crisis of 1978–80 is found in Daniel Yergin and Martin Hillenbrand, eds, Global Insecurity: A Strategy for Energy and Economic Renewal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982).
130. For discussions of ecological parties, see Claude-Marie Vadrot, L'Ecologie: histoire d'une subversion (Paris: Syros, 1978);
131. Garraud, ‘Politique electro-nuctéaire et mobilisation';
132. Roland Roth, ed., Parlamentarisches Ritual und politische Alternativen (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1980);
133. Jörg Mettke, ed., Die Grünen: Regierungspartner von morgen (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1982);
134. Ferdinand Muller-Rommel, “‘Parteinen neuen Typs” in Westeuropa: eine vergleichende Analyse', Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen, xiii (1982), 369–90;
135. Horst Mewes, ‘The West German Green Party', New German Critique, xxviii (1983), 51–83.
136. The new parties thus destabilize the formation of cleavages that have been institutionalized in West European party systems throughout most of this century. Compare Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan, eds. Party Systems and Voter Alignments (New York: Free Press, 1967).